# Making Canada Relevant Again- The Economic Super-Thread



## PPCLI Guy (30 Sep 2004)

Have a look at this article from the New York Times that was reprinted in the International Herald Tribune:

http://www.iht.com/articles/541155.html

David Bercusson wrote that there is a the national malaise that is making Canada a second-rate, uncompetitive nation, and that "(i)t is the very spirit of the nation and the sickness that now has hold of it that is at fault."   Michael Bliss added that "I'm in almost total despair. You have a country, but what is it for and what is it doing?"

Are we really that bad?   Does this slice of the intelligentsia speak for the nation, or is it just that they happen to be the flavour of the month?

It strikes me, that much as is suggested in the article, we as a nation go through cycles of self-loathing - and not always deservedly.

Perhaps Jeffery Simpson had it right: In an interview, Simpson said that while this was not a particularly bleak time for general population, pained intellectual musings are not that surprising or unexpected for a country "that has never had a defining national myth," like the American Revolution or the Civil War.


.


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## ackland (30 Sep 2004)

IMHO i thnk one of the key points that was briefly mentioned is part f the problem. Pre Trudeau we seemed to be a nation. With all the oppening up of immigration from 3rd world counties we lost alot of our britishness. I'm not blaming imigrants for our countries state. I am saying that with alot of those people coming form war torn countries or countries that were very stricked and military like they now fear the  military and are leary of a strong military pressence at home or abroad.

The other point I take issue with is the "that has never had a defining national myth," like the American Revolution or the Civil War.

Do we as a nation need some drastic war to live off of  to gain a national identity? Perhaps I missunderstand. If he says that this will help us lets invade Quebec and have our own civil war perhaps that will help.


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## Brad Sallows (30 Sep 2004)

"What is it for and what is it doing" is a very good question.

I frankly have no respect for a nation that obsesses over and defines itself by its health care coverage.  From where I sit on the political map, it appears that Canadians want freedom without responsibility.  If the electorate would force the federal government to concentrate on matters of state and quit interfering in the matters of lower jurisdictions I would be happier.


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## Torlyn (30 Sep 2004)

Aside from some glaring contradictions in the article (well reknowned authors?  In their circles, perhaps) I think this is just another attempt at America picking on its northern brother.  No defining national myth?  Try the war of 1812, if the Yanks are looking for a myth...

There is a Chinese proverb and curse, "may you live in interesting times".  Let's think on that for a moment.  Maybe this current wilting that the americans are talking about is something along those lines.  Just because we don't bounce from war to war, foreign policy to foreign policy like a drunken sailor ashore for the first time in a year, doesn't mean we're declining.  IMHO, we're doing quite well, thank you.  Why panic and create problems where none truly exist?  Sure we need more money in our military, and a stronger global presence, but we are working on these.  (Cynicism aside, please.  Let's pray that PM PM holds true to his words)

To TR: 
A lot of our immigration policy is perhaps in response to Canada's deplorable, racist and anti-semetic policies during the 1920's-40's.  One of the things that (to me, anyway) defines Canada, and makes us better than other nations, is our ability and willingness to allow for immigration to occur.  The complaint that it takes away our Canadian heritage is a farce.  I am perfectly capable of maintaining my Canadian heritage while allowing for non-WASP's to immigrate to this country.  Keep in mind as well the "non-britishers" are still the minority in Canada, and cannot be blamed for a dislike of the military...  I wonder if there are any stats on minority's feelings/opinions towards the military...  Hmm..  Off to look.  

T


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## Michael Dorosh (30 Sep 2004)

Bercuson is a well known military author, however, he is a Labour Historian and never served in the military.  That doesn't invalidate him from having an opinion.  His books range from mediocre to good.  Significant Incident was good, I thought, but don't know much about Somalia - his history of the militayr in Canada that was in that volume seemed good.  His regimental history of the Calgary Highlanders was adequate, and did cover ground not covered in Farran's earlier softball look at the subject.

His book on Korea was not as good, and I understant the Patricias were unhappy with his history of that regiment also?

I studied at the U of C when Bercuson was head of the history dept (IIRC) but never had him as a prof.  I've talked to him only once, at a gun show a couple years back when I was in uniform - he didn't expect to be recognized.   

He's as qualified as anyone to have an opinion and probably more qualified than most, but I don't give his opinion the same credence I would to say, Lew Mackenzie or even Jack Granatstein.  Others may feel differently.


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## Michael Dorosh (30 Sep 2004)

As for defining national myths, look no further than the Militia Myth - the belief that in times of crisis, we can simply throw together all our best backwoodsmen, brawlers, hockey netminders and lumberjacks and instantly create a multi-division field army that can beat the best the enemy has to offer.     We didn't really fight WW I and WW II that way, but most people like to think we did.   

Vimy Ridge was taken by a professional army with three years of training and battle experience - hard learned lessons, many dead soldiers, lots of costly mistakes, but in the end a technologically adaptable Army that learned those hard lessons well.   Pierre Burton would have us believe they were all railroadsmen, trappers, hunters and fishermen who took Vimy Ridge on a dare.

It's a pretty dangerous myth as far as myths go, cause the government today just might believe the myth.


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## Torlyn (30 Sep 2004)

Michael,

   Well said on both.  There's a book, Bastards and Boneheads by Will Ferguson that goes in to some of those myths.  I'll have to see if my library has Bercuson in.  Suppose I can pop back to my alma mater and get his book there as well.  

T


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## Cloud Cover (30 Sep 2004)

Michael Dorosh said:
			
		

> As for defining national myths,
> 
> Vimy Ridge was taken by a professional army with three years of training and battle experience - hard learned lessons, many dead soldiers, lots of costly mistakes, but in the end a technologically adaptable Army that learned those hard lessons well.   Pierre Burton would have us believe they were all railroadsmen, trappers, hunters and fishermen who took Vimy Ridge on a dare.
> 
> It's a pretty dangerous myth as far as myths go, cause the government today just might believe the myth.




What I observed as a late bloomer going into university was that Vimy Ridge was never, ever mentioned as a defining moment in Canadian history. The overwhleming tide of revisionist academics who currently dominate universities and governemnt prefer to see the hanging of Louis Riel, the sacrifices made on the   home front for imperialist wars, foreign minister Lester Pearson, the Quiet Revolution, Trudeaumania, the October crisis, the Anti-Inflation Act, the Election of the PQ and the sovereignty referdum, the Charter and Meech Lake, FTA and NAFTA, the Somalia Affair,the 1995   budget spelling the so-called end of the welfare state twinned with the common sense revolution, and finally the Romanow commission were defining moments in Canadian history. But Vimy Ridge, Dieppe, Ortona, BCATP, Battle of the Altlantic .... these were not defining moments because Canadians are not a warrior nation, we are a peacekeeping nation who cherish social values over needless militarism. After all, none of our so-called enemies were a threat to us, because we never did anything to provoke them in the first place. 

How's that for a myth?


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## PPCLI Guy (30 Sep 2004)

Torlyn said:
			
		

> I think this is just another attempt at America picking on its northern brother... Maybe this current wilting that the americans are talking about is something along those lines.  Just because we don't bounce from war to war, foreign policy to foreign policy like a drunken sailor ashore for the first time in a year, doesn't mean we're declining.  IMHO, we're doing quite well, thank you.



The source *of* the article (the US) is less important than the sources *in* the article.  I think that you may be following a false thread there.  The sources IN the article are all Canadian commentators




> Why panic and create problems where none truly exist?  Sure we need more money in our military, and a stronger global presence, but we are working on these.  (Cynicism aside, please.  Let's pray that PM PM holds true to his words)



I am quite happy to give the man (and the "administration") a chance to walk the walk - Lord knows he can talk the talk...


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## Gunnar (1 Oct 2004)

Freedom without responsibility.  That's probably a good definition.  No defining national myth....well, we have them, but we don't teach them any more.  It might step on somebody's expression of their ethnicity.  Talk to a recent highschool graduate of today, and ask them about basic, Canadian things...

Who was Robert Service?
What was Vimy?  Dieppe?
Who were the Zombies?
What is the purpose of the Governor General?
When was the War Measures Act invoked in peace time?  By whom?  Why?
Spell the following:  Honour, Colour, Labour, Traveller....
What is the last letter of the alphabet?
Does Canada need an army?
Was Louis Riel a) a patriot b) a defender of minority rights c) a martyr d) a traitor who was rightfully hanged?
When did Newfoundland join Confederation?
Apart from shipbuilding, what major industry was Nova Scotia known for?
What was the Springhill disaster?
Where is Pile'o'bones, and what is it called today?
The writer of O Canada wrote it in which language?
Who's picture is on the 100 dollar bill?  Who was he?

Most of these are history questions, but if you have no pride in your history, how do you know what your country has stood for, and how can you say it still does?

Then, there's other questions:

What all-Canadian children's show replaced The Friendly Giant?  Mr. Dressup? 
Name the top three Canadian TV shows.
Give a reason for watching TV channels in french, without resorting to a "I don't speak English" argument, e.g., like good shows that are worth watching or provoke dialogue (Francophones only).  Express those shows as a percentage of your TV watching experience.
What burning issues were discussed in Ottawa today?  Washington?  Which one made the news first?
Name three people on Ottawa's walk of fame.
Name an issue that galvanised all Canadians into instant action.  Do not make reference to hockey.


The electorate is barely aware we HAVE a country, much less motivated enough to force Ottawa to do ANYTHING.  Canada is the homeless shelter for the world, feeding everyone on our freedom, soup kitchens and medical care, but never insisting that they do anything to earn it, citizens included.  

Freedom?  Everyone loves us, why should we defend it?  Besides, the US is there.

Culture?  Oh, we don't have one.  We're a cultural mosaic.  Anything you believe is OK with us.  Even if your ideas are patently inimical to freedom.  That's OK.  We're tolerant.

Nationalism?  We don't want to impose on the world, do we?  Or put our interests ahead of another nations?  That's what the US does, they're bad.  'Cept when they're defending us...

Law and Order?  Sure, as long as we don't "profile" likely criminals, and treat 80 year old grandmas the same way as Hells Angels bikers...who knows what granny has in her handbag?

Border security?  Not in our ports.  We'll do random checks...after we disband the RCMP unit that showed widespread corruption on the waterfront.  Besides, everybody loves us.

Oh, we have a deficit, no armed forces to speak of, a Coast Guard in need of overhaul?  Yes, but forgiving debt to Third World Nations we should never have loaned money to in the first place is more important.  Doesn't anyone care about the people in Africa?  Remember, as Canadians we have to love everyone.

The country has no ideals, no beliefs, nothing to fight for or cherish and they wonder at the national malaise?   The Canadian identity is defined today more than ever as "not being American", while eating American food, watching American TV, and relying on American largesse.  How exactly are we different?  Well, we have health care....AND????


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## PPCLI Guy (1 Oct 2004)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> "   If the electorate would force the federal government to concentrate on matters of state and quit interfering in the matters of lower jurisdictions I would be happier.



Sadly, that would imply that the electorate was aware of constitutional jurisdictions - which they are not.


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## ackland (1 Oct 2004)

Torlyn said:
			
		

> To TR:
> The complaint that it takes away our Canadian heritage is a farce.   I am perfectly capable of maintaining my Canadian heritage while allowing for non-WASP's to immigrate to this country.



I never made that statement. I said british heritage. Which is being erroded. this country was fought for and won by the british. I'm not saying that immigration is bad or can only come from certain countries. I am from Ontario and am seeing alsorts of weird and disturbing things coming from the polations here that takes away from the traditions and heritage that came from our british brothers. IE the sharia's law now being investigated by the provincial liberals here. A muslim law that could allow for wife beating and other extremist islamic practices. Not that islam is bad as a whole. Just that whyt open a door for human rights violations here in a country that has always stood for ensuring people have them. 

I don't fear change. I just don't like bad change. Which is where IMHO we are headed these days. 

I don't even have a problem with our french county men. It has been appart of this country from the start and should remain.


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## LowRider (1 Oct 2004)

Gunnar said:
			
		

> The electorate is barely aware we HAVE a country, much less motivated enough to force Ottawa to do ANYTHING.   Canada is the homeless shelter for the world, feeding everyone on our freedom, soup kitchens and medical care, but never insisting that they do anything to earn it, citizens included.
> 
> Freedom?   Everyone loves us, why should we defend it?   Besides, the US is there.
> 
> ...



Great post,That is Canada to a tee!


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## pbi (2 Oct 2004)

> I never made that statement. I said british heritage. Which is being erroded. this country was fought for and won by the british. I'm not saying that immigration is bad or can only come from certain countries. I am from Ontario and am seeing alsorts of weird and disturbing things coming from the polations here that takes away from the traditions and heritage that came from our british brothers. IE the sharia's law now being investigated by the provincial liberals here. A muslim law that could allow for wife beating and other extremist islamic practices. Not that islam is bad as a whole. Just that whyt open a door for human rights violations here in a country that has always stood for ensuring people have them.
> 
> I don't fear change. I just don't like bad change. Which is where IMHO we are headed these days.
> 
> I don't even have a problem with our french county men. It has been appart of this country from the start and should remain.



This statement is a variation on the tired old sawhorse "we Anglos built this country and these damned furriners are rooin' it!" My question is, exactly when did we stop building Canada? Cheers.


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## onecat (2 Oct 2004)

"  If the electorate would force the federal government to concentrate on matters of state and quit interfering in the matters of lower jurisdictions I would be happier.

Not to change the topic too much... but where is this inferferring and just what is Federal jurisdiction to you?


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## PPCLI Guy (2 Oct 2004)

radiohead said:
			
		

> "   If the electorate would force the federal government to concentrate on matters of state and quit interfering in the matters of lower jurisdictions I would be happier.
> 
> Not to change the topic too much... but where is this inferferring and just what is Federal jurisdiction to you?



From the Constitution:

VI.     DISTRIBUTION OF LEGISLATIVE POWERS

     

POWERS OF THE PARLIAMENT

Legislative Authority of Parliament of Canada   91.   It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate and House of Commons, to make Laws for the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada, in relation to all Matters not coming within the Classes of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces; and for greater Certainty, but not so as to restrict the Generality of the foregoing Terms of this Section, it is hereby declared that (notwithstanding anything in this Act) the exclusive Legislative Authority of the Parliament of Canada extends to all Matters coming within the Classes of Subjects next hereinafter enumerated; that is to say, 
1.   Repealed. (44)   
1A.   The Public Debt and Property. (45)   
2.   The Regulation of Trade and Commerce.   
2A.   Unemployment insurance. (46)   
3.   The raising of Money by any Mode or System of Taxation.   
4.   The borrowing of Money on the Public Credit.   
5.   Postal Service.   
6.   The Census and Statistics.   
7.   Militia, Military and Naval Service, and Defence.   
8.   The fixing of and providing for the Salaries and Allowances of Civil and other Officers of the Government of Canada.   
9.   Beacons, Buoys, Lighthouses, and Sable Island.   
10.   Navigation and Shipping.   
11.   Quarantine and the Establishment and Maintenance of Marine Hospitals.   
12.   Sea Coast and Inland Fisheries.   
13.   Ferries between a Province and any British or Foreign Country or between Two Provinces.   
14.   Currency and Coinage.   
15.   Banking, Incorporation of Banks, and the Issue of Paper Money.   
16.   Savings Banks.   
17.   Weights and Measures.   
18.   Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes.   
19.   Interest.   
20.   Legal Tender.   
21.   Bankruptcy and Insolvency.   
22.   Patents of Invention and Discovery.   
23.   Copyrights.   
24.   Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians.   
25.   Naturalization and Aliens.   
26.   Marriage and Divorce.   
27.   The Criminal Law, except the Constitution of Courts of Criminal Jurisdiction, but including the Procedure in Criminal Matters.   
28.   The Establishment, Maintenance, and Management of Penitentiaries.   
29.   Such Classes of Subjects as are expressly excepted in the Enumeration of the Classes of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces.   

And any Matter coming within any of the Classes of Subjects enumerated in this Section shall not be deemed to come within the Class of Matters of a local or private Nature comprised in the Enumeration of the Classes of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces. (47)

EXCLUSIVE POWERS OF PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURES

Subjects of exclusive Provincial Legislation   92.   In each Province the Legislature may exclusively make Laws in relation to Matters coming within the Classes of Subjects next hereinafter enumerated; that is to say, 
1.   Repealed. (48)   
2.   Direct Taxation within the Province in order to the raising of a Revenue for Provincial Purposes.   
3.   The borrowing of Money on the sole Credit of the Province   
4.   The Establishment and Tenure of Provincial Offices and the Appointment and Payment of Provincial Officers.   
5.   The Management and Sale of the Public Lands belonging to the Province and of the Timber and Wood thereon.   
6.   The Establishment, Maintenance, and Management of Public and Reformatory Prisons in and for the Province.   
7.   The Establishment, Maintenance, and Management of Hospitals, Asylums, Charities, and Eleemosynary Institutions in and for the Province, other than Marine Hospitals.   
8.   Municipal Institutions in the Province.   
9.   Shop, Saloon, Tavern, Auctioneer, and other Licences in order to the raising of a Revenue for Provincial, Local, or Municipal Purposes.   
10.   Local Works and Undertakings other than such as are of the following Classes:   

(a)   Lines of Steam or other Ships, Railways, Canals, Telegraphs, and other Works and Undertakings connecting the Province with any other or others of the Provinces, or extending beyond the Limits of the Province:   
(b)   Lines of Steam Ships between the Province and any British or Foreign Country:   
(c)   Such Works as, although wholly situate within the Province, are before or after their Execution declared by the Parliament of Canada to be for the general Advantage of Canada or for the Advantage of Two or more of the Provinces.   

11.   The Incorporation of Companies with Provincial Objects.   
12.   The Solemnization of Marriage in the Province.   
13.   Property and Civil Rights in the Province.   
14.   The Administration of Justice in the Province, including the Constitution, Maintenance, and Organization of Provincial Courts, both of Civil and of Criminal Jurisdiction, and including Procedure in Civil Matters in those Courts.   
15.   The Imposition of Punishment by Fine, Penalty, or Imprisonment for enforcing any Law of the Province made in relation to any Matter coming within any of the Classes of Subjects enumerated in this Section.   
16.   Generally all Matters of a merely local or private Nature in the Province.


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## RCD (3 Oct 2004)

We have been wilting for a long time. an now we are on the verge of falling even further & faster


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## rmc_wannabe (3 Oct 2004)

Hey ,
   
     I come from the other side of the fence of this argument on Canadian identity. As and immigrant to this country i feel more of a dedication to it. My family came to this country to enjoy the life you all take for granted.
coming to a country where i can vote freely and without fear of retribution is one of the reasons I'd fight and die for it. Whoever said that immigrants don't feel a commitment to Canada is either inept or ignorant. I come from a family that has given their all to do things for this country. My grandfather was an engineer back home, who became a bricklayer to come to Canada. My Father was the first person in my family's 300 year genealogy to ever receive a university education, and scrubbed toilets to pay for it. For these opportunities , I myself decide to help protect the country that has given these opportunities to my family. Ask an immigrant on their opinion before you comment.


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## Cloud Cover (3 Oct 2004)

rmc_wannabe said:
			
		

> Hey ,
> 
> I come from the other side of the fence of this argument on Canadian identity. As and immigrant to this country i feel more of a dedication to it. My family came to this country to enjoy the life you all take for granted.
> 
> Ask an immigrant on their opinion before you comment.



First of all, rare is the bird on this site who this takes this country for granted... many here are putting their lives on the line so you can have a cushy country in which to live. I'll leave it to others to jack you up further for that stupid comment. I'm not going to bother any further with the ignorant comments already made about immigrants by others, I'm quite sure they will also be spoken to. However, you can be also be sure that there is no need for anybody in this country to seek the permission of anybody, immigrant or not, before they comment on immigration in a reasoned manner.  

Frankly, if you "wannabe" at rmc, you will shortly learn that when your opinion is wanted, you will be told what it will be and when to state it. With your attitude, I have a feeling you are going to have a tough time with that ...  perhaps you should consider other career options.


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## Michael Dorosh (4 Oct 2004)

RECON-MAN said:
			
		

> We have been wilting for a long time. an now we are on the verge of falling even further & faster



Chicken Little said the same thing...


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## logau (4 Oct 2004)

Ref the Militia Myth and the Mythters and Mythis who keep spouting this please like me nonsense

Should amend it to the Militia (non Permanent and Permanent Active Militia) Myth 

I  you's!

And I's from an immigrant family too and I's going to RMC and will meet anyone who yaps on about this at RMC outside - right now!   :skull:


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## LowRider (4 Oct 2004)

logau said:
			
		

> Ref the Militia Myth and the Mythters and Mythis who keep spouting this please like me nonsense
> 
> Should amend it to the Militia (non Permanent and Permanent Active Militia) Myth
> 
> ...



Was that intended to be a joke of some sort???


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## logau (4 Oct 2004)

Yes - the Myth part is a joke on who ever brings it up. 

And the step outside part is one on Whiskey 601 telling the guy his thoughts of RMC were unwelcome. :crybaby:

Have I mythed anything?

Anyone want more?     :blotto:


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## Michael Dorosh (4 Oct 2004)

logau said:
			
		

> Yes - the Myth part is a joke on who ever brings it up.
> 
> And the step outside part is one on Whiskey 601 telling the guy his thoughts of RMC were unwelcome. :crybaby:
> 
> ...



I don't think anyone has a clue what it is you're rambling about, care to start again?


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## logau (5 Oct 2004)

To clarify - in this thread I support your post about beware of mythmaking and don't support the post of one member telling another to reconsider their thoughts on going to RMC.


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## a_majoor (14 Mar 2005)

All we hold dear, all we thought worth standing on guard for, all we were ultimately willing to put our lives on the line for slipping away?



> *We're doomed*
> 
> 
> Monday, 14 March 2005
> ...


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## PPCLI Guy (14 Mar 2005)

Hmmm.   It is relatively easy to find a blogger whose view of the world will jive with yours.   Just because it is posted on the internet, doesn't make it so - and we have seen plenty of examples of that in Army.ca   

I prefer, in my naively optimistic way, to disagree with Mr Steyn.   Canada is not doomed - but the Canada that Mr Steyn wishes we lived in is.

Here is the litmus test - would I want to live anywhere else? 

(And before anyone asks, yes, I have seen a bit of the world, am an immigrant from Europe, have another passport if I chose to use it, and have marketable skills - indeed I turned down a chance to emmigrate in the last 10 years).

The answer is no.   

Canada - that great experiment - is just where I want to be. Will I agree with everything that happens in this, my chosen land?   No.   

Will I continue to serve her greater interests? Yes.

My two cents.

Dave


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## CBH99 (15 Mar 2005)

Right on Dave.  I too was born overseas, and immigrated from the UK at the age of 2.  I've been back to Europe several times, and I would consider myself to be flexible enough, and possess enough standardized skills to be marketable to foreign countries.

However, I would never choose to live outside of Canada.  And if I absolutely had to, I'd probably move back to Europe - I would NEVER make a home south of the border.  No disrespect to Americans, but I certainly wouldn't want to make America my home.

True, there are some things in this country that need work.  There are some things in this country that need to change.  There are some things in this country that I disagree with.  But, would I chose to live anywhere else in the world?  No.  Would I feel as safe in a foreign country, as I do here in Canada?  Probably not.


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## squealiox (15 Mar 2005)

that's mark steyn for ya. he's got a real talent for tarting up his lurid wet dreams and repackaging them as grim prophesies of doom.
so here's my grim prophesy: canada, the eu, the us and the rest of western civilisation will still be open for business in 2010, 2020, 2030 and so on, with each year of continued prosperity bringing an increasingly hysteric mark steyn ever closer to his inevitable aneurysm.
and those countries that still haven't become "radically secular" will still be toilets (like saudi arabia, iran, the nation-cult known as north korea, etc).

my 2 cents (which by then should be worth a whole dollar -- or 90 euros or 80 yen, take your pick)


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## Glorified Ape (15 Mar 2005)

squealiox said:
			
		

> that's mark steyn for ya. he's got a real talent for tarting up his lurid wet dreams and repackaging them as grim prophesies of doom.
> so here's my grim prophesy: canada, the eu, the us and the rest of western civilisation will still be open for business in 2010, 2020, 2030 and so on, with each year of continued prosperity bringing an increasingly hysteric mark steyn even closer to his inevitable aneurysm.
> and those countries that still haven't become "radically secular" will still be toilets (like saudi arabia, iran, the nation-cult known as north korea, etc).
> 
> my 2 cents (which by then should be worth a whole dollar -- or 90 euros or 80 yen, take your pick)



lol I agree, and I love your phrasing. Although I wish he really would give information on emigrating to those people writing him for it.

What he says about the Democrats in the US does seem to be largely true but I'd attribute that to a healthy serving of circumstance with a side of incompetence. Both sides fall flat on their face and the other side always heralds it as the end of an ideology but that seems little more than wishful thinking.


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## vangemeren (15 Mar 2005)

I could list a couple of dozen of countries that are a lot worse of than Canada.


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## LowRider (15 Mar 2005)

vangemeren said:
			
		

> I could list a couple of dozen of countries that are a lot worse of than Canada.



Obviously there are worse places to live,but there are reasons for that.it is quite arrogant to think Canada is immune to misfourtune that has befallen other countries.Canada is nothing more than a straw house beside a brush fire.One small spark and it's game over.


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## a_majoor (17 Mar 2005)

One American's veiw: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/349tpijp.asp


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## vangemeren (17 Mar 2005)

> Obviously there are worse places to live,but there are reasons for that.it is quite arrogant to think Canada is immune to misfourtune that has befallen other countries.Canada is nothing more than a straw house beside a brush fire.One small spark and it's game over.



There is potential for any country to collapse into anarchy. We must be vigilant to keep it from going that way.

I would like to know everybody's opinions on the one thing that would doom Canada as a single, free, and civil nation.


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## LowRider (17 Mar 2005)

> I would like to know everybody's opinions on the one thing that would doom Canada as a single, free, and civil nation.



Growing civil unrest is a big one,coupled with a massive implosion of our fragile economy.


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## PPCLI Guy (17 Mar 2005)

Loss of prosperity

Total loss of identity


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## Brad Sallows (17 Mar 2005)

I am certainly guilty of bouts of negativism.  I have travelled to several countries, not all primarily English-speaking, in which I could bring myself to live and work comfortably.

The values and character of societies are always subject to change.  Some societies and cultures have proven more amenable to the advancement of freedoms than others.  When the resulting change starts to retard rather than advance freedoms, there is danger.  The values of an earlier Canada were the enablers of the values we hold today.  The values we hold today might be greater enablers or not; I don't think there is enough evidence to decide which way we are moving on the freedom vector.


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## I_am_John_Galt (17 Mar 2005)

I think that as long as we continue to allow the growth of Socialism, and Positive Rights in particular, our economy will go the way of the Dodo ... that said, I think that (in the absence of major change) Europe's economy will collapse first which will (hopefully) scare enough Canadians straight ... it CAN happen to us.


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## squealiox (17 Mar 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> I think that as long as we continue to allow the growth of Socialism, and Positive Rights in particular, our economy will go the way of the Dodo ... that said, I think that (in the absence of major change) Europe's economy will collapse first which will (hopefully) scare enough Canadians straight ... it CAN happen to us.



Just how is Europe's economy going to collapse? It's comparable to those of the us or asian countries, and europe also has a lot of intrinsic disadvantages the us doesn't: the eurozone has very real language barriers, segmented capital markets, germany is still digesting the old east germany, etc. (canada also is at a scale disadvantage to the us).   for all that, you can still look up the oecd data and see that yes, the us does lead in per-capita gdp, but they're all within the same ballpark. plus, the us is every bit as protectionist (ag subsidies, industrial tarriffs, you name it) as the rest of them, even moreso in many cases.
as for all this tinfoil-hat talk about the supposed "socialism" of europe or canada, do you really believe the canadian economy is closer to comecon than to the us model? Some of the most competitive companies in the world are from europe, and a few from canada as well. just try to name a single soviet enterprise that managed to compete globally. i can't.


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## LowRider (18 Mar 2005)

> as for all this tinfoil-hat talk about the supposed "socialism" of europe or canada, do you really believe the canadian economy is closer to comecon than to the us model?



Totalitarianisim-Is any political system in which a citizen is totally subject to a governing authority in all aspects of day to day life.It involves constant indoctrination achieved by propaganda to erase any potential for dissent.

A communist state by definition is a state ruled by a single political party,sound familiar?
In Marxist political theory,Capitalisim is to be replaced by socialisim and socialisim is to be replaced at some point by communisim.

I think i will keep mt tinfoil hat,and you may keep your rose coloured glasses.


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## I_am_John_Galt (18 Mar 2005)

squealiox said:
			
		

> Just how is Europe's economy going to collapse?


The crushing cost of the Nanny-state.




> It's comparable to those of the us or asian countries, and europe also has a lot of intrinsic disadvantages the us doesn't: the eurozone has very real language barriers, segmented capital markets, germany is still digesting the old east germany, etc. (canada also is at a scale disadvantage to the us).  for all that, you can still look up the oecd data and see that yes, the us does lead in per-capita gdp, but they're all within the same ballpark. plus, the us is every bit as protectionist (ag subsidies, industrial tarriffs, you name it) as the rest of them, even moreso in many cases.


Europe has tons of advantages and United States tons of disdavantages, too: the point is that as Europe's economy (and Canada's) is becoming increasingly socialized, the US is pulling further and further ahead.  The US is certainly far more protectionist than they let on, but they have *nowhere near* the the level of protectionism of Europe.




> as for all this tinfoil-hat talk about the supposed "socialism" of europe or canada, do you really believe the canadian economy is closer to comecon than to the us model?


Than the US?  Definitely.  What do you mean by "supposed socialism"?  Are you trying to tell me that Trudeau, the NDP and about half (probably more) of Europe's political parties aren't socialist?  



> Some of the most competitive companies in the world are from europe, and a few from canada as well. just try to name a single soviet enterprise that managed to compete globally. i can't.


Not entirely certain what your point is here, but soviet enterprises failed primarily because they were controlled by bureaucrats (much like healthcare is in Canada).  Yes Europe and Canada have some globally competitive companies, but the vast majority are from the US: why do you think that is? 

Europe's economies are failing because labour productivity continues to slide (what the hell did they think a 35-hour work week would do).  Higher wages and longer vacations sound nice, but when coupled with dis-incentives to work are courting disaster.  Think of the perversity of the childcare situation in Canada: tax the hell out of people so the 'average' Canadian family (which I think now means both spouses working) can't afford childcare, then spend their money (after suitable administrative deductions for yourself and ad firms that donated to your campaign) to provide them with the service for 'free'.

For much of our history Canada's unemployment rate was close to that of the US (and sometimes lower): after decades of creeping socialism it is around double that of the US, but the revisionists claim that it is in some way related to our geography (or some other rubbish), rather than the 'social safety net' (yes, I am using that last term pejoratively). 



 New study compares GDP and growth:
EU versus USA


If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany have lower GDP per capita than all but four of the states in the United States. In fact, GDP per capita is lower in the vast majority of the EU-countries (EU 15) than in most of the individual American states. This puts Europeans at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Only the miniscule country of Luxembourg has higher per capita GDP than the average state in the USA. The results of the new study represent a grave critique of European economic policy.

Stark differences become apparent when comparing official economic statistics. Europe lags behind the USA when comparing GDP per capita and GDP growth rates. The current economic debate among EU leaders lacks an understanding of the gravity of the situation in many European countries. Structural reforms of the European economy as well as far reaching welfare reforms are well overdue. The Lisbon process lacks true impetus, nor is it sufficient to improve the economic prospects of the EU.   http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/


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## tomahawk6 (19 Mar 2005)

I think the greatest threat to the confederation is the issue of Quebec. At some point I think the people will vote to strike off on their own. Whether Quebec can survive on its own is a different matter entirely. If Quebec leaves then perhaps other Provinces [Alberta and BC] might follow suit. The problem I see [from the outside looking in] is that the more populous eastern Canada has a different agenda than does western Canada. The loss of Quebec voters would hurt the Liberal Party and might level the political playing field in the rest of Canada which I think be a good thing.

Those of US in the red states see Canada as our own future if the Democrats had their way. The erosion of religion and traditional values in Canada has been very steady. Canada is a much different place than it used to be. Canada and the US used to share these traditional values, but we dont anymore. Gay marriage and the legalization of drugs are two issues we have had in common but our two countries are on opposite sides of the issues. Our liberals support it and our conservatives dont. So far the traditional values wins out.

American's dont view Canada as an extension of the US. The charm of Canada to me is its British flavor, as befitting her membership in the Commonwealth. Canada was the colony that remained loyal to Britain. But I find Canada's increasing hostility to US foreign policy [defense driven] a major problem. Canada's major issues are economic [softwood and beef to name a couple]. Canada obstructs US foreign/defense policy which isnt good for the relationship. But Canada's embrace of Euro style socialism is hindering Canada's own economic future. Social programs are preventing Canada from providing for its own defense.
Canada used to be a major military power and now its not. Britain used to be a superpower and now its not. Why do you think that is ? Socialism. Once the NHS was created in Britian taxes went up and healthcare funding began to preclude military spending. Year by year the cost went up. Year by year the military declined. Both Canada and the UK have decided that it is more important to have national healthcare than to have infantry battalions, warships and combat aircraft. The reason is that the world is "safer" we have no enemies. Pretty soon the reduced military capability constrains foreign policy - essentially its a risk averse policy. Dont do anything that might make another country mad. Play it safe. Finally this policy forces the country to oppose the policies of its ally. The enemy of my friend is my friend policy.

I would like to see Canada turn back the clock to a time when she had traditional values that made it possible for Canada to stand tall in the world without regard to what other countries felt. To a time when Canada did something because it was right and not because it was popular. To a time when Canada was a world leader.


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## Infanteer (19 Mar 2005)

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> I think the greatest threat to the confederation is the issue of Quebec. At some point I think the people will vote to strike off on their own. Whether Quebec can survive on its own is a different matter entirely. If Quebec leaves then perhaps other Provinces [Alberta and BC] might follow suit. The problem I see [from the outside looking in] is that the more populous eastern Canada has a different agenda than does western Canada. The loss of Quebec voters would hurt the Liberal Party and might level the political playing field in the rest of Canada which I think be a good thing.



Although I agree with alot of what you say, Tomahawk, I just don't feel the "regional" card is our biggest political hurdle.  When you look at the way voting went in the last election (and in all our elections in general) you find that the main avenue of political division is between City and Non-City (not necessarily rural area).

If you look, the Liberals took (aside from the Maritimes and parts of Ontario this time) almost all of their seats in the major cities.  Even in the West, which hasn't been a Liberal stronghold in the last few decades, the Liberals took ridings in Major city centers (Winnipeg, Vancouver, Edmonton, Victoria) while all the outside ridings sent mostly Conservatives.  The Bloc has, since it split away from the PC party, had a share of the Quebecois malcontent vote (just as Reform had its share of Western Malcontent), but there is a sizeable portion of people outside of the St. Lawrence River valley that don't really care to leave Canada.

I think this may come to trump regionalism - even within a provincial context.  A lumberjack in Northern BC has more in common with a rural fisherman in Nova Scotia then he does with some guy who slings coffee or sell ad space in Downtown Vancouver.


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## PPCLI Guy (19 Mar 2005)

I dithered over responding to this (see - I msut be a Liberal!), but finally decided to weigh in.



			
				tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> I think the greatest threat to the confederation is the issue of Quebec. At some point I think the people will vote to strike off on their own. Whether Quebec can survive on its own is a different matter entirely. If Quebec leaves then perhaps other Provinces [Alberta and BC] might follow suit.



well, we have made through the last 40 years, and i imagine we will continue to do so.



> The problem I see [from the outside looking in] is that the more populous eastern Canada has a different agenda than does western Canada.



That is the nature of a federation.   The Midwest has a different agenda from the Eastern Seabord - and from California.   The Red states have a different agenda from the Blue states.   Homogeneity is both unlikely and unhealthy, to say nothing of boring...



> The loss of Quebec voters would hurt the Liberal Party and might level the political playing field in the rest of Canada which I think be a good thing.



Quebec voters are also Canadian voters.   I guess if we could eliminate all the liberal voters, we would have a "level playing field" - one level enough that even Harper could win.



> Those of US in the red states see Canada as our own future if the Democrats had their way. The erosion of religion and traditional values in Canada has been very steady.



Another way of saying that of course is that the growth and evolution of the state and its values has been steady...



> Canada is a much different place than it used to be.



S'okay by me.



> Canada and the US used to share these traditional values, but we dont anymore.



You say that like it is a bad thing.   We are two different socities, on very different tracks.   Divergence started a long time ago - and we are only slightly tangential to each other.   The farther down the track, the greater the divergence.



> Gay marriage and the legalization of drugs are two issues we have had in common but our two countries are on opposite sides of the issues. Our liberals support it and our conservatives dont. So far the traditional values wins out.



It is okay to be on opposite sides - we are two soverign nations.



> American's dont view Canada as an extension of the US.



Good.



> The charm of Canada to me is its British flavor, as befitting her membership in the Commonwealth. Canada was the colony that remained loyal to Britain.



A view not widely held in Calgary, Dartmouth, or Rimouski...we are, as the saying goes, a mosaic of views, perspectives, and histories



> But I find Canada's increasing hostility to US foreign policy [defense driven] a major problem.



A problem for whom?



> Canada's major issues are economic [softwood and beef to name a couple].



And the vain hope that the rules of NAFTA will be abided by.



> Canada obstructs US foreign/defense policy which isnt good for the relationship



Obstructs, or disagrees with?   I don't see any volition here, except perhaps in response to the above mentioned "economic troubles".



> But Canada's embrace of Euro style socialism is hindering Canada's own economic future. Social programs are preventing Canada from providing for its own defense.



Canada is a democracy - one of several (ok, 2 1/2) in North America.   It is not "social programs" that is preventing Canada from providing for its own defence - it is the democratic will of the people that is doing that.



> Canada used to be a major military power and now its not.



Beg to differ.   We have only been a "major military power" twice: during (and decidedly not after) WW I and WW II.



> Britain used to be a superpower and now its not.



Agreed



> Why do you think that is ? Socialism.



That is a little simplistic, as analysis goes, don't you think?



> Once the NHS was created in Britian taxes went up and healthcare funding began to preclude military spending. Year by year the cost went up. Year by year the military declined. Both Canada and the UK have decided that it is more important to have national healthcare than to have infantry battalions, warships and combat aircraft.



I don't see it as so completely either / or, but I understand your argument.



> The reason is that the world is "safer" we have no enemies. Pretty soon the reduced military capability constrains foreign policy - essentially its a risk averse policy. Dont do anything that might make another country mad. Play it safe. Finally this policy forces the country to oppose the policies of its ally. The enemy of my friend is my friend policy.



Or perhaps it truly is as a result of a more altruisitic and less pragmatic worldview?   The ascendance of liberalism over realism?



> I would like to see Canada turn back the clock to a time when she had traditional values that made it possible for Canada to stand tall in the world without regard to what other countries felt.



I am not a fan of "traditional values" nor do i believe that it was *those* values that allowed us to "stand tall".



> To a time when Canada did something because it was right and not because it was popular.



Popular - you mean like in accordance with the wishes of the people?



> To a time when Canada was a world leader.



That job is already taken


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## Zipper (19 Mar 2005)

LOL!! 

Well said PPCLI.

I found the initial article and following ones quite entertaining. The collapse of the EU within 10 years! HA! I guess the growing US debt has no affect on its economy at all? Also considering that Europe and China hold a vast quantity of US war bonds, it would be interesting if they all decided to cash those in at the same time?

Someone back there stated that the US has control of the majority of large multi-national companies? I think they had better go back and read their facts again.

For those of you who are of the AMajoor Ilk. I think you should all move to southern Alberta. Where you can talk about separating from Canada and joining the States. Where you can drill an oil well in your living room without any environmental damage what-so-ever. Where the minimum wage is so low, you can pay your workers less then what they would make at McDonald's. Where the idea of a social program is a bus ticket to East Vancouver. 

You'd love it there.

 :dontpanic:


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## Infanteer (19 Mar 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> For those of you who are of the AMajoor Ilk. I think you should all move to southern Alberta. Where you can talk about separating from Canada and joining the States. Where you can drill an oil well in your living room without any environmental damage what-so-ever. Where the minimum wage is so low, you can pay your workers less then what they would make at McDonald's. Where the idea of a social program is a bus ticket to East Vancouver.
> 
> You'd love it there.
> 
> :dontpanic:



As one of the "AMajoor Ilk", I love to see valid concerns dismissed with a "Love it or Leave it" (this time applied to socialist policies) approach to counter-arguing the issues.... :


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## air533 (19 Mar 2005)

.


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## tomahawk6 (20 Mar 2005)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050319/ap_on_he_me/canada_wait_your_turn

Article seems to point to a meltdown in the healthcare system. Hope not.


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## Zipper (20 Mar 2005)

We may have long waits for hospital care. But that is because we are servicing the ENTIRE population. Not just those who can afford it.


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## Brad Sallows (20 Mar 2005)

So many people wring their hands about softwood and cattle, yet are prepared to export health care services in the name of ideological purity.  Go figure.


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## oyaguy (20 Mar 2005)

Well said Zipper. 

To say Canada is doomed is both an exaggeration and a possibility. The reasons Mark Steyn gave were superficial, and given his interesting skew, unconvincing

I personally don't think it will be as a result of regional differences. Quebec is an important, and integral part of Canada, and I don't think they will be separating from Canada. Separatists in Alberta, are a kind of threat, and a joke. Whatever, Albertans may have had problems with the Federal government {when people bring up the NEP, I just roll my eyes, "get over it"} but we are quite comfortable in Canada.

The traditional values divergence, big whoop and traditional values are overrated {Easy for me to say, my parents are still married, my mother was a homemaker, and my sibling is a well adjusted straight, married person}. Besides, Canadian Society is not going to stand or fall on whether homosexuals can marry, women can get abortions,  or sex education {beyond that abstinence only BS} is taught at school. 

Economically, we are good and screwed at the same time. The  debt is lower, the economy is doing well. The US debt is going up, and when or if that implodes, Canada is going down with the US.

The catch-all socialism that Mark Steyn describes is kind of weird. Does he know what he is talking about? The US for example is in a bigger hole when it comes to funding their "socialist" program {social security} than Canada is. 

Bigger pits for Canada looks to me like, the fact that our infrastructure is not keeping up. You can experience this infrastructure deficit by driving on your pothole strewn streets.

Another is our ageing population, whom we have to provide medical care. A bright side for the aging population is that Canada is an attractive and accessible enough country and society to be a prime candidate for immigration. I mean accessible in that immigrants are welcomed, for example how many people move to Japan? Why not? They're rich, they have a high standard of living, but they're not accessible. 

Then immigration brings its own problems, a lot of them of our own making.

Another pit is the environment. They environment can only take so much before we have to start paying back with interest.

Whatever. I can think of more and better ways Canada is doomed than Mark Steyn.


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## squealiox (20 Mar 2005)

john gault, 

maybe mark steyn's got a fancier bloomberg terminal than i do, but i haven't been seeing any great stampede, or even trickle, of investments away from the currencies, stocks and bonds of europe or canada, or any latin-america-style warnings of political risk from any of the credit ratings agencies about these economies.

so steyn can toast our demise all he wants, but i'm afraid i'm just going to have to go with the market on this one.

(unless, of course, you're privy to some information the world's investment analysts have all overlooked, in which case you should immediately be setting up a hedge fund)


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## gnplummer421 (20 Mar 2005)

Phew..a lot of reading there,

Interesting for sure, my concerns about the EU revolve around the present situation in Holland. Once a very Liberal Country, the recent killing of a film maker over a controversial Islamic shortfilm, has driven a wedge between the Islamic population and the more traditional religions there. Like us, Holland is also a "Land of immigrants" where many different cultures co-exist. Perhaps the changing trends there will be seen here in Canada in the future. I'd like to think we are extremely tolerable toward race,religion,etc. My biggest fear is Islamic expansion in the world, more precisely, the radical component of Islam that couldl eventually spread to every part of the planet. We will not be immune forever.


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## mdh (20 Mar 2005)

> I personally don't think it will be as a result of regional differences. Quebec is an important, and integral part of Canada, and I don't think they will be separating from Canada. Separatists in Alberta, are a kind of threat, and a joke. Whatever, Albertans may have had problems with the Federal government {when people bring up the NEP, I just roll my eyes, "get over it"} but we are quite comfortable in Canada.



As Mark Steyn would point out it's a feature of the Trudeaupian soft totalitarianism to make certain political perspectives unacceptable and apparently illegitimate.   One of the officially approved ones is to think of Quebec as reflecting some eccentric "regional difference" within the bounds of confederation - a concept that Gilles Duceppe would finding amusing (not to mention Jacques Parizeau).   Given the 54 Bloc seats in the federal parliament (an unthinkable prospect 20 years ago) and the near death experience of the1995 referendum, I would think that Quebec's propects for going it alone have never been better. (Although in English Canada we think that the PQ is wedded forever to a referendum, it's not necessarily so - a new generation of leadership may simply say that the next time you vote for the PQ you are voting for sovereignty - and that's good enough for a UDI  -- the Clarity Act be damned.) 

And if the people of Alberta can't over that "NEP" thing and get on with it, one wonders why Quebec can't get over that "Plains of Abraham" thing and get on with it. 



> We may have long waits for hospital care. But that is because we are servicing the ENTIRE population. Not just those who can afford it.



Actually we're RATIONING healthcare for the ENTIRE population (and continuing to fall behind) and doing so with budgets that are threatening to overwhelm provincial treasuries with double-digit increases every year. Most provinces are facing the propect of healthcare crowding out all other forms of government spending (some are now approaching 50 per cent of expenditure on healthcare)   Our medicare system is unsustainable, sclerotic, and increasingly inefficient, and although the left keeps talking about the glories of socialist medicine as a Canadian "value" that can be afforded if we want (to paraphrase Romanow) the real question the left never answers is how much will be enough? Will 50 per cent of your personal income going to taxes (as it is now) be enough to pay for the welfare state as we know it? Perhaps 70 per cent? Perhaps 90 percent? If Canada defines itself as a giant hospital ward, then heaven help all of us.



> For those of you who are of the AMajoor Ilk. I think you should all move to southern Alberta. Where you can talk about separating from Canada and joining the States. Where you can drill an oil well in your living room without any environmental damage what-so-ever. Where the minimum wage is so low, you can pay your workers less then what they would make at McDonald's. Where the idea of a social program is a bus ticket to East Vancouver.
> 
> You'd love it there.



Ah yes, another love it or leave it outburst (as noted by Infanteer), which is of course the favoured rhetorical tactic of the Liberal Party (Jean Chretien mumbled similar sentiments not so long ago). 

Actually Mississippi's unemployment rate if the same as ours at 7.1 percent but at least the southern states have had periods of sustained economic growth - a far cry from some "regions" of Canada where the nanny state has lulled entire populations into narcotic-like dependence on EI programs and so-called regional development schemes. 

As for McDonalds I for one am tired of the usual left-wing suspects using that noble corporation as a favourite whipping boy.   It may excite the Zippers of the world, but getting rid of Supersizing was just another example of how weak and vulnerable most corporations are when faced by media-inspired pressure - in this case an unholy (unhealthy?) alliance of Hollywood cokeheads and vegan nuts based on a slanted agitprop documentary that managed to get an Oscar nomination - (and as Mel Gibson would be the first to note, predictably so, since any anti-corporate rant gets similar approval). 

I personally love McDonalds and thank it for having saved me from many a vicious hangover after a night of unrestrained alcoholic mayhem.   (Besides Mayor McCheese was an inspirational figure for me and I challenge anyone to deny the value of the Hamburglar as a moral archetype to teach children the fundamental commandment that stealing is bad.)

I want Supersizing back no matter what the health nazis say (and it's no coincidence that we are targetted by endless propaganda about fitness at at a time when the state is all powerful in the delivery of healthcare - we can expect more of this with the Ontario Chief Medical Officer recently suggesting that portion control should be imposed on restaurants).

And yes, Zipper, if Green Cards were available to the general populace in Canada there probably would be a significant exodus south to the lair of the Great Satan as thousands of Canadians took their Honda Civics (like East German Trabants the one car they can afford) and crossed the border never to return to enjoy the one thing that Canada has turned its back on in the last 25 years - liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Sincerely,

Another A-Majoor Ilkist


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## a_majoor (20 Mar 2005)

Right now I am doing some preliminary research into the finances of my home city. The property taxes have increased by 7% last year; 6% this year and we are already hearing dire warnings about a 9% increase next year. 

Since the service we actually do get from the city is crap, much of this increase can be attributed to out of control growth of the city staff, and paying for a wide range of pharonic building projects which benefit a few key players, while sucking up taxpayer money for interest charges and so on.

I believe that I could cut at least $100,000,000 (one hundred million) dollars from the budget without adversely affecting the real services which property tax is supposed to provide (i.e the protection of property); it will be interesting to see how many "ilkists" will come out and vote when offered a 10% tax *cut*......Imagine how many more ilkists would flock to the cause if a detailed review revealed spending and taxes could be cut substantially more.


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## mainerjohnthomas (20 Mar 2005)

Canada lives, and will continue to live as long as "we stand on guard for thee".  The biggest threat to Canada comes from thecombination of regional political parties and the  destabilizing effects of large scale ethnic immigration.  These immigrant groups are self segragating and increasing the regional differences between the Canadian Provinces.  The Bloc Quebecois, the Reform party, the Liberals, the regional skew of voters is allarming.  The pandering to ethnic voting groups who "bloc vote", and to regional issues over national ones for the short term goal of winning seats serve to weaken the long term stability of the nation.  All democratic nations must deal with this.  Europe is now trying to wrestle with this problem itself for the first time.  Canada being not a two party state like the US enjoys the greater freedom, and thus greater danger, in its politics.  Canada will endure as long as we remain dedicated to it.  Canada faces great challenges, as we have in every decade since Giovani Cabotti found the St Lawrence.  We are an older nation than Germany, and I think no more likely to fall into the American Abyss than Germany to dissappear in the EU.


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## pbi (20 Mar 2005)

Yes, Canada is doomed. 

In fact-- we all are. A giant asteroid is going to smash into the earth when we are not looking. 

That will serve some people right, that's all I can say.

Cheers.


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## Cloud Cover (20 Mar 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> The crushing cost of the Nanny-state.




Priceless!! Just remember, for everything else, there's Mastercard!!


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## mdh (20 Mar 2005)

> Yes, Canada is doomed.
> 
> In fact-- we all are. A giant asteroid is going to smash into the earth when we are not looking.
> 
> ...



You don't need an asteroid - just sit through an eight-hour federal-provincial conference - the asteroid would be comic relief,

cheers, all, mdh


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## Cloud Cover (21 Mar 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> I believe that I could cut at least $100,000,000 (one hundred million) dollars from the budget without adversely affecting the real services which property tax is supposed to provide (i.e the protection of property); it will be interesting to see how many "ilkists" will come out and vote when offered a 10% tax *cut*......Imagine how many more ilkists would flock to the cause if a detailed review revealed spending and taxes could be cut substantially more.




Please tell me you are going to sell off the planning and zoning departments. I would also like to see the JLC sold off, the City Solicitors office reduced to a part timer who is confined to actual municipal legal work instead of human rights and the law severance packages.  Cancel any and all cash advances to UWO and then increase property taxes on the university  - except the concrete beach because thats only place in the city where you get a true appreciation for the finer things in life around here.   

My property is actually "protected" by the OPP - so I don't really get any protection at all - so I would like to see that expense trimmed down as well. I'll opt instead for the trip wire activated/.22 cal/ propane tank buried in the ground type of protection-much more effective at a fraction of the cost. 

Also, might I suggest contracting out the job of the truck that hauls poop from one treatment plant to another? He slows me down in the morning on my to work. Thanks, eh!


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## a_majoor (21 Mar 2005)

One vote, now for the other 300,000...... ;D


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## Zipper (21 Mar 2005)

lol, mdh.

You make me laugh.

To think that you haven't had a heart attack yet is amazing.

Health care being screwed up? Yep. Way to expensive in many case for what you get? Yep. Do I know how to fix it? Nope. Do we need it? You bet.

Are city property taxes high for what you get? Yep. And where does the money all go too? Who knows. But do we need them to run a city? Yes sir.

Do tax cuts work? They make people happy until their water main breaks, or that hole needs to be filled. Not that they get filled up here either...but oh well.

Oh yeah. I thought I did live in the land of the free? Maybe not free to own a gun and carry it. Certainly free to think of other things then how I'm going to afford that medical bill. But thats ok by me.

As for the get on board or get out. Well no. We all have our own view of things, and thats just dandy. I wouldn't want to condemn even you to an existence below the border. Let them do things their own way, drive there big SUV's, tear up their own environment,etc.  And I'll just drive my own Honda (how'd ya guess? ) up here, thanks.

And maybe Majoor will get elected. Who knows. He'll try his best and we'll see. The wonders of free elections.


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## buzgo (21 Mar 2005)

http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=9c28d25a-554d-46f5-9d57-8c1fd9855906



> Making Canada relevant again
> Michael Petrou has a tete-a-tete with the woman reworking our foreign policy.
> 
> Michael Petrou
> ...


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## mdh (21 Mar 2005)

> To think that you haven't had a heart attack yet is amazing.



I'm saving my cardiac arrest for the next Civ-u posting   

cheers, mdh


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## Brad Sallows (21 Mar 2005)

Why is this in one person's hands?


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## Edward Campbell (21 Mar 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Why is this in one person's hands?



If by that you mean why has Welsh been brought on board? then the answer is that the PM (and Pettigrew and Graham) were dissatisfied with the report prepared by the foreign service professionals.

The word around here - rumours, actually - is that Martin had two complaints:

"¢	No vision, as the article points out; and

"¢	No _*pizzazz*_, whatever that means.

My rumour mill says the foreign service's report was _pedestrian_ to the point of being downright _lame_: a bit more of the same, please.

But, I also hear that Martin is unhappy with Welsh's direction, too.   Welsh is a bit of a _star_ right now but she is no fool and some of her ideas will, I hear, be less than popular in the Youth Wing of the Liberal Party of Canada and in that party's _Women's Commission_.   She is a realist; I think she pays too much attention to American _hyper-power_, but that's a quibble.   I, equally, don't like her _model citizen_ model but that too is a quibble.   I think Welsh is saying: increase the military, be prepared to use it, with allies, to solve human security issues; make up with the Americans, when we disagree we must do so in a respectful, mature manner; look East, away from Europe - it's old news.   None of that will go down well inside the Liberal Party.


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## Zipper (22 Mar 2005)

SO here it comes!! Die Die!! :threat:

Gack...    ...Phssst...        ...blaupgh...

Another one bites the dust...

 :dontpanic:

Ya, I know...           ...weird.


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## daniel h. (22 Mar 2005)

I know people who took classes with Jennifer Welsh at the University of Toronto. She's a globalist who believes we are "citizens of the world". She also wants us to lower our health and safety regulations to the U.S. level, and literally merge our economy with the U.S. economy. She doesn't believe in nationalist of any kind, even positive nationalism:

Are we ready to be citizens of NAFTA?
The idea of a North American passport may be premature, but there's already a de facto concept of citizenship among Canada, Mexico and the U.S.
   
Jennifer Welsh 
Special to the Sun 


Saturday, March 19, 2005

LONDON - Eleven years after the North American Free Trade Agreement, the $14-trillion North American economy is the world's largest trade bloc, and the near-doubling of intracontinental trade flows surpassed the hopes of even the most optimistic proponents.

Building on these successes, the three signatory governments -- Canada, the United States and Mexico -- agreed one year ago in Monterrey to a North American initiative to enhance productivity and create common markets in selected industries. They began developing a regional strategy for managing energy and science and technology.

But any future efforts to deepen integration must contain a political dimension if NAFTA is to maintain its legitimacy.

North American integration cannot be neatly compartmentalized into economic and political categories, because success in the former generates pressure for the latter. NAFTA has created consumers, firms and (to a much lesser extent) employees on a North American scale, but the North American citizen has been left behind.

Cultivating a notion of "citizenship" with respect to NAFTA (and any other continental institutions that may appear on the horizon) is essential to ensuring the success of further economic integration.

"Citizenship" in its broadest sense includes not only the right to equal treatment before the law, but more positive political and social entitlements such as the right to vote and stand for public office, as well as access to publicly funded social services.

We most commonly associate it with swearing-in ceremonies and passports, but its most substantive purpose is to give people a voice in the affairs of the institutions that affect their lives -- which, as NAFTA demonstrates, are becoming increasingly continental in character.

One need only look to the experience of the European Union to understand the importance of citizenship in continental integration.

The 1980s were marked by significant strides to deepen economic integration -- including the free movement of goods, capital and economically active citizens -- that culminated in a single European market in 1992. But it became clear in the 1990s that the channels of political participation were not keeping pace.

As a result, the Maastricht Treaty allowed EU worker-citizens to vote in and stand for local elections in any member nation in which they reside, irrespective of their nationality. This helped transform a "businessmen's Europe" into a "people's Europe," giving the European common market added legitimacy.

The recent draft treaty establishing a constitution for Europe goes even further by enshrining the notion of citizen equality and involving national parliaments in the legislative process of the EU. It also includes concrete provisions for engaging European civil society.

But lessons from Europe can only go so far in a North American context. First, it must be remembered that Europe's integration project was initially fuelled by the political desire to prevent another major European war. NAFTA, by contrast, was a product of business and economic forces, and its institutional footprint has always been small.

www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=808429f9-1bf1-4a80-a9fa-c689660c4e4e


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## daniel h. (22 Mar 2005)

mainerjohnthomas said:
			
		

> Canada lives, and will continue to live as long as "we stand on guard for thee".   The biggest threat to Canada comes from thecombination of regional political parties and the   destabilizing effects of large scale ethnic immigration.   These immigrant groups are self segragating and increasing the regional differences between the Canadian Provinces.   The Bloc Quebecois, the Reform party, the Liberals, the regional skew of voters is allarming.   The pandering to ethnic voting groups who "bloc vote", and to regional issues over national ones for the short term goal of winning seats serve to weaken the long term stability of the nation.   All democratic nations must deal with this.   Europe is now trying to wrestle with this problem itself for the first time.   Canada being not a two party state like the US enjoys the greater freedom, and thus greater danger, in its politics.   Canada will endure as long as we remain dedicated to it.   Canada faces great challenges, as we have in every decade since Giovani Cabotti found the St Lawrence.   We are an older nation than Germany, and I think no more likely to fall into the American Abyss than Germany to dissappear in the EU.




Absolutely. I find many comments here rather silly. America's conservatism leaves 45 million without health care, and American has an 8 trillion dollar debt. They actually are screwed.

As for Canada, immigration, high taxes on the poor, low to non-existent taxes on the bigget corporations and a neo-liberal deregulated economic system have all brought stress, but remember, the 1950s was Canada's high point, and it could happen again. People working towards a common goal, post WW II boom.....

People always avoid the obvious which is we have adopted American-style monopoly capitalism instead of a true competitive mixed economy, and we have let the Americans and Europeans own our major industries and real estate.


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## Gunnerlove (22 Mar 2005)

If the US is succeeding and Canada is failing I must be missing something. Our economy is growing and we are living within our means for the first time in ages, perhaps we might actually pay off the debt we have been carrying since WW1. I know a portion of Canadians would love to spend a fortune on the military and go stomping around the world but hey, we don't have the money or the will as a nation. You are just going to have to deal with the fact that most Canadians would choose having health care in Canada over having troops in Iraq.


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## TCBF (22 Mar 2005)

" and American has an 8 trillion dollar debt. They actually are screwed."   

-They will do fine.   Taxes are dropping and the economy is growing. You would get richer there than here.   We get paid in Snow Pesos.

"You are just going to have to deal with the fact that most Canadians would choose having health care in Canada over having troops in Iraq."

-We are a rich country.   If we cut down on corruption, useless programs and graft (HRDC, ADSCAM, etc) we could have both.

"America's conservatism leaves 45 million without health care"

-Without a health care PLAN, but not without health care.   Even illegal immigrants get health care. 

Tom


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## mdh (23 Mar 2005)

> Absolutely. I find many comments here rather silly. America's conservatism leaves 45 million without health care, and American has an 8 trillion dollar debt. They actually are screwed.



Yes it is true that fighting a major war against terrorism has cost the US in blood and treasure - and in the meantime liberated millions from the yoke of a vicious Baathist kleptocracy in Iraq, driven Syria out of Lebanon, tamed Libya, and inspired Egyptian democracy  -- not to mention erasing the sheer lunacy of the Taliban in Afghanistan.   We in Canada chose another path and sided with Germany and France. And yes, you are right, we have chosen health care as a national priority - certainly a self-referential policy decision - and arguably a very insular one - which means what in historical terms?: How about this -we worried about own butts first - and reduced our military and foreign aid to minimal levels leaving the world to twist in the wind. I'm not sure that makes us morally superior. It could make us morally reprehensible.   



> As for Canada, immigration, high taxes on the poor, low to non-existent taxes on the bigget corporations and a neo-liberal deregulated economic system have all brought stress, but remember, the 1950s was Canada's high point, and it could happen again. People working towards a common goal, post WW II boom.....



I'm not sure if this is an argument in favour of Canada in the post-war period or an argument against it. 

If the poor have been taxed to death in Canada, then perhaps we should eat the rich instead (as the NDP has suggested)? But the definition of rich has been a sliding scale downward in Canada for the past 30 years.   In fact it's the middle class who have been eaten alive by taxation - take away inflation and factor in escalating taxation (both indirect and personal) and you find the average family no better off today than in 1993. As for the evils of low corporate taxes and the "neo-liberal deregulated economic system" - all I can say is which Maude Barlow-Mel Hurtig propaganda screed did you get that from? 

Canada remains one of the most highly regulated economies in the world, with a system of forced union membership (the Rand formula), elaborate government subsidies to corporations, restrictive labour codes, red tape at the federal, provincial, regional, and municipal levels, a regulatory language requirement, etc, etc, etc   - (and with Kyoto on the horizon we can expect more of the same - on a pharonic scale.)

NAFTA was introduced by the Mulroney Tories because it was the only viable economic option that promised to raise our economy out of the slump in the late 1970s and 1980s.   If you don't believe me then ask the federal Liberals - they kept NAFTA in place and reneged on their promise to tear it up.   NAFTA and the alleged evils of the market have been a resounding success for Canada - as most free trade regimens have been throughout history. 

And the only reason why the federal Liberals adopted fiscal austerity was becase because basically forced on them by the IMF and the markets - not by some higher ethical fealty to balanced budgets.

As for a "common" goal, I like it as an ideal too - but the election of the PQ in 1976 has made that problematic.   And let's not forget that our common goals in WW2 were not as common as we might believe in the warm glow of post-war triumphalism   - the Conscription Crisis, the Bloc Populaire and the Zombies are discomfiting reminders that there have always been fissures in the national dream. If you want a common goal how about helping our traditional allies defeat terrorism?



> People always avoid the obvious which is we have adopted American-style monopoly capitalism instead of a true competitive mixed economy, and we have let the Americans and Europeans own our major industries and real estate.



What's to obviate? I don't know what you mean by "American-style monopoly capitalism" in this context? Do you mean the late 19th or early 20th centuries American plutocracy ie the J.P. Morgan, Jay Gould? Or their nemesis Teddy Roosevelt? Or are you making a contemporary reference? If so, ever hear of the US federal Anti-Trust Act? How about ITT? Bell? Microsoft? - other large corporations that were broken up by the US federal government via judicial order? 

In Canada we've always had a branch-plant style economy due mainly to a thin population and a lack of sufficient capital. And anyway doesn't this point contradict your earlier contention above that Canada has been apparently victimized by free market reforms and deregulation? Either we're a monopolist economic monstrosity or a Dark Satanic Mill of neo-liberal exploitation - not both.

Mark Steyn is an entertaining polemicist, and I don't necessarily agree that Canada is "doomed".  I suspect we'll muddle through like we always have. We're all patriots here otherwise we wouldn't be wearing this country's uniform (or have worn it), and doing so with considerable pride and aplomb. But let's not slide into complacency or false superiority when it comes to our American cousins - I think we've seen enough simplistic Yank bashing lately.

cheers, as always, mdh


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## daniel h. (23 Mar 2005)

mdh said:
			
		

> Yes it is true that fighting a major war against terrorism has cost the US in blood and treasure - and in the meantime liberated millions from the yoke of a vicious Baathist kleptocracy in Iraq, driven Syria out of Lebanon, tamed Libya, and inspired Egyptian democracy  -- not to mention erasing the sheer lunacy of the Taliban in Afghanistan.   We in Canada chose another path and sided with Germany and France. And yes, you are right, we have chosen health care as a national priority - certainly a self-referential policy decision - and arguably a very insular one - which means what in historical terms?: How about this -we worried about own butts first - and reduced our military and foreign aid to minimal levels leaving the world to twist in the wind. I'm not sure that makes us morally superior. It could make us morally reprehensible.
> 
> I'm not sure if this is an argument in favour of Canada in the post-war period or an argument against it.
> 
> ...




What I mean regarding "monopoly capitalism" is that a very small number of businesses do the majority of the business, meaniing mergers and aqusitions, meaning very little real competition. Small businesses compete, but big businesses would rather just buy each other out.


Regarding NAFTA, it was not the solution to our dowturn, it was the acceleration of it. Exports increased, but our dollar fell, which is the biggest reason exports rose, and productivity dropped. Manufacturing jobs disappeared, and over 10,000 Canadian companies were taken over. Google investment Canada. We are essentially an economic protectorate of the U.S.A.


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## Brad Sallows (23 Mar 2005)

Why does it matter to you who owns the companies?


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## Brad Sallows (23 Mar 2005)

I should place appropriate emphasis: "Why is this in _one_ person's hands?"

What is there about Jennifer Welsh that makes her necessary and sufficient to the drafting of Canada's foreign policy?  What is there about her field of expertise which deludes anyone into even beginning to believe it is possible for one person to "get it right"?


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## Infanteer (23 Mar 2005)

I'll second Brad's suspicions.

As well, the idea of the "Global Citizen" sounds pretty silly - some Tajik or Somalian is likely to give jack-shit about "Global Citizen Values" when it comes to crunch time.  I've recently been reading some stuff on the clash of our Professional Soldiers with Warrior Societies - interesting stuff, and it leads me to believe that alot of our Western preconceptions, including "Global Citizenship" usually get checked at the door....


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## Infanteer (23 Mar 2005)

daniel h. said:
			
		

> Google investment Canada. We are essentially an economic protectorate of the U.S.A.



What were we before NAFTA?  Google "Trudeau's Pirouette" and see how he did.

I think, when it comes to economics, some basic laws of gravity apply - Io won't be leaving Jupiter's orbit anytime soon....


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## Edward Campbell (23 Mar 2005)

Jennifer Welsh gained both 'face' and popularity here by disagreeing, publicly and eloquently, with Alan Gotlieb and the _big bang_ group here in Ottawa.   Gotlieb and friends argue that the only way we can make the Americans 'pay attention' is to offer them a truly _big deal_ - no more _creeping continentalism_ (my phrase), rather a customs union and a common border 'union' and _North American Defence Command_ all rolled up into one package.

Welsh countered, correctly, I think, that there are so few Americans interested in anything like a _big bang_ that it would land with a dull thud and be forgotten by Tuesday morning.   She argued for many of the same things Gotlieb wants â â€œ customs union, to start (followed by a currency union), security union (common _ outer perimeter_ border, etc and a complete _joint_ and _combined_ (sea, land air), North American Defence Command, etc â â€œ but, she suggested, one at a time, without too much political involvement because Canadians, broadly, do   to want to _cozy up_ to our American friends and neighbours â â€œ anti-Americanism is a deep rooted, dark and unpleasant part of our national psyche and Welsh, like many successful politicians, understand that.   Welsh positioned herself in the space into which Paul Martin was forced to back-peddle and he has grabbed her like a drowning man grabs a branch.

I hear that the foreign policy review â â€œ completed last fall with DND's inputs â â€œ was, really, a pretty sad piece of work.   I am not, personally, surprised because, in my personal, outsider's opinion, DFAIT's _strategic analysis_ capability disappeared several years ago â â€œ driven out by a government (Chrétien's) with a _Johnny-one-note_ agenda: trade, Trade, TRADE (trade imagery if not trade reality, anyway), and a deep distrust of the old, Anglophile, three-piece suit and spats, bureaucracy.

Some of what Welsh says makes really good sense, some doesn't and some reflects her, current, Eurocentric, work.   She has one other distinct advantage: she writes clear, concise English; one of the reason so many people disagree with her is that they actually understand what she said!

Paul Martin believes that he can, and must, improve his electoral prospects by presenting a new foreign policy with some _pizzazz_ and then, he further believes, by doing well on the internationals stage where, he also believes, he does well.   Welsh might give him what he needs â â€œ something which Canadians can understand and something with which they can, broadly, agree.

About Welsh, specifically; she is young, attractive, female, part-aboriginal, a minor celebrity in Oxford (even _better_ than Harvard) and she was a card carrying Liberal.


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## a_majoor (23 Mar 2005)

You want to do something about corporate ownership? Buy shares and mutual funds......


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## a_majoor (23 Mar 2005)

A policy review written by one person is more likely to be a focused piece of work than some model driven by comittee; but it should be subjected to a public review before Mr Dithers decides to adopt it (at least adopt it until the Youth Wing or Women's Commission starts making rude noises).


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## Infanteer (23 Mar 2005)

Everytime I hear Mr Campbell mention the word "pizzazz" I start to grimace for some reason - I'm trying to imagine Bismark, Palmerston, or Teddy Roosevelt using it in their statesmanship.... :-X


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## Edward Campbell (24 Mar 2005)

Infanteer said:
			
		

> Everytime I hear Mr Campbell mention the word "pizzazz" I start to grimace for some reason - I'm trying to imagine Bismark, Palmerston, or Teddy Roosevelt using it in their statesmanship.... :-X



In fairness, Infanteer, I didn't coin the phrase.

This is one of the 'sources': http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1107564215578_8   



> PM outsources search for national identity
> 
> Canadian Press
> 
> ...



I seem to recall that the _Globe_ and the _Post_ also used the same phrase.

According to the secret decoder ring I got in my cereal box _â ?senior government officialâ ?_ means top level staffer in the Prime Minister's Office â â€œ probably Scott Reid â â€œ speaking on _â ?deep backgroundâ ?_.

I like the CTV News title: PM outsources search for national identity.   You would think â â€œ and here I agree 100% with Welsh â â€œ that after almost 140 years we, Canadians, might not still need to little group hugs where we reaffirm our _national identity_.   If you want to know about our national identity then go to Vimy Ridge, Ortona and to Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, but that's another rant.

From 1969 onwards Canadian foreign policy has been, explicitly, tied to domestic policies.   Now, for some people, that will be as it should be â â€œ all policies, I have said, should be bound by some unifying threads of _national values_ and even _ideals_.   But that's not what Ivan Head and Pierre Trudeau meant when they said, in the '69 White Paper, that foreign p9licy needed to serve the ends of domestic policies.   They were, formally, renouncing the 20 year old St. Laurent policy which cast Canada as a _â ?leading middle powerâ ?_.   Nonsense, said Trudeau/Head, we are neither strong enough nor rich enough to 'lead' other nations, nor do we wish to be; we have our own problems, here in Canada, and we want our foreign affairs to help us to advance our domestic goals.   Things we do in the wide world must _serve_ our domestic â â€œ national unity and social policy â â€œ agendas.   Colossal wastes of time, money and political capital like _La Francophonie_ (created in 1970) and the North-South Institute (1976) are the direct results of that policy.  They are wastes of political capital to us because they make 'promises' we cannot, will not keep.

Although Welsh says the right things on dealing with the US, for example, in many respects she is a Trudeauite and I keep seeing Ivan Head's ideas poking out from behind her own well crafted words. (See: http://www.ubyssey.bc.ca/20041105/article.shtml?%3C!--1--%3Enews/1founder.html for a link between Head's _â ?global citizenshipâ ?_ and Welsh's _â ?model citizenâ ?_ concepts.)


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## Infanteer (24 Mar 2005)

Edward Campbell said:
			
		

> In fairness, Infanteer, I didn't coin the phrase.



Oh, I know that Mr Campbell - I was referring to the word in general.   Everytime I see it, it seems to conotate Canada's search for a "hip and cool" Foreign Policy that would look good on MuchMusic.... ^-^


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## PPCLI Guy (24 Mar 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> A policy review written by one person is more likely to be a focused piece of work than some model driven by comittee; but it should be subjected to a public review before Mr Dithers decides to adopt it (at least adopt it until the Youth Wing or Women's Commission starts making rude noises).



As I understand it, she is literally doing the writing, as opposed to doing the stimate and coming up with the plan.


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## Edward Campbell (24 Mar 2005)

PPCLI Guy said:
			
		

> As I understand it, she is literally doing the writing, as opposed to doing the stimate and coming up with the plan.



I think you're right; I cannot see the top level bureaucrats standing still, even for the Prime Minister, if their _appreciation of the global strategic situation_ was to be challenged.   I also think Welsh is smart enough to understand that the official, bureaucratic _world view_ is, probably, fairly sensible and well grounded.   They, the _mandarins_, have information which is not available to her - they have information which they rarely, if ever, share with their minister or the PMO - usually because (as we, and Gomery heard from Alex Himelfarb re: Chrétien and the Auditor General) ministers and the PM do to want to know too much detail.

That being said, the rumour mill where I stop for the odd pint, says that her first cut was rejected because she went too far for Pettigrew, Himelfarb, the foreign affairs top brass and Ken Calder (ADM Policy at DND) but not far enough for Defence Minister Graham, his DM Ward Elcock and some people working under Himelfarb in PCO.

Welsh is a respected academic with a _following_ of her own; she did not sign on to _take dictation_, not from Pettigrew's minions and not, even, from Paul Martin.   One of the reasons she is respected is because she is smart; smart enough to know that one does not dictate policy in Ottawa.   Successful policies have to have _buy ins_ from many (most, preferably) of the _stakeholders_ and you don't get those by ignoring the good advice of the _establishment_ - some of which, like Calder at DND, have been around for a long, long time and have many allies scattered throughout government, business and academe.

I think she will insist of two points being included:

"¢	Grow up, Canada! and

"¢	Be a global 'model citizen.'

I think the _establishment_ will win and she will soft-peddle North American integration.   The argument, which she would do well to accept, is that Treasury Board Secretary Alcock has already, quietly and boringly, begun the process and, for now, the less said the better.   See: http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/media/nr-cp/2005/0324_e.asp 

I hope Elcock and company win out against her military _niche role_ proclivity.   It is, I think, her weakest plank - she is not well schooled in defence issues; I hope someone, Canada or the UK, recruits her into a very high level defence policy/strategy post (maybe Calder's (he's _sixtyish_ now, I guess, and has been in place for nearly 15 years) here in Ottawa); she is a quick learner and a few years juggling policy dreams and fiscal realities might do wonders for her perspective.

Welsh needs two things from this policy review:

"¢	Since it is now common knowledge that it is hers, it must get a good reception from both the foreign policy establishment and the popular press; and

"¢	It should become an entrée into the small, exclusive world of top level strategic policy.

Paul Martin needs a policy which:

"¢	Gets a passing grade in Washington - which it will if she does the _Grow up, Canada!_ shtick and avoids the _niche market_ nonsense; and

"¢	Plays well in Québec and with the Liberal Party of Canada Youth Wing and _Women's Commission_ - which it will do if she avoids talking about continentalism (creping or leaping) and does her _model citizen_ dance.


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## Reccesoldier (25 Mar 2005)

This "Model Citizen" crap reminds me of Martin Wight's reference to such noble ideals as "the empty professions of peaceful purpose and common interest."

It would be just like this government to piss the minute remainder of international respect this nation has, away on a pipe dream of warm and fuzzy feelings and good intentions. 

The meek may inherit the earth but not until the strong are well and truly done with it.

Soft Power anyone?


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## Infanteer (25 Mar 2005)

Reccesoldier said:
			
		

> The meek may inherit the earth but not until the strong are well and truly done with it.



Beautiful.

I'm still waiting for the "Spartan Revolution" to overtake Canada....


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## mainerjohnthomas (25 Mar 2005)

Making Canada relavent again.  Just a few easy steps here.  Actually buy and get deleivery of the hulls promised to the LAV III projects, procure C-17's to deploy them.  Spend the money to get the infantry trained up on the new weapon mix, and the armour on doctrine for the new kit.  Deploy our troops in force with clear mission objectives to use force to make change, not keep score, in the next hellhole chosen for summer vacation.  Likewise the Navy requires upgrades if it is to help in force projection. Afghanistan was one of the first good missions in decades.  Darfur would be one case where force used by a small international coalition could bring good Canadian values (genocide isn't Canadian eh?) at gunpoint to the needy.  Using military force to disarm and disband the racial militia's is a good use of force.  Putting troops on the ground to stand between them is a case of half measures being all the way stupid; too much risk for no possibility of good outcome.    If we are to be internationally relavent, we have to commit force enough to the task at hand to warrant input at the policy table.  Combat makes changes, peacekeeping preserves the status quo.  Iraq and Afghanistan made changes.  Yugoslavia just boiled more slowly, the peacekeepers mandate kept the real possibility of making peace forever out of their hands.  It is not enough to have the force, you must have the ability and will to use it.   Our politicians seem to be wedded to half measures and equivocating.  Military force is an unequivcable as you get.  Hammers do not get used gently, they get used with precision and measured force.  The best hammer in the world accomplishes nothing without the will to let it fall.  Given sufficient funding we can give them a hell of a hammer, we can't give them the spine to use it.


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## JBP (26 Mar 2005)

Many many good points and opinions have been voiced in this thread. In fact, all the way from what I would consider good enough to be arguments before Mr.Dithers himself on how to run certain parts of the country/fix problems, to horribly inaccurate!...

Here's my 0.02 cents. Take it as you will, crap or gold.

Many people touched on one problem they see facing Canada in the future, individualism, nationalism. What is "Canadian" per se? We have more immigrants per year than we do actual babies born, probably not a surprise. In fact if we didn't have those immigrants, we'd have a higher death rate then we do a birth rate. We're not that far off from having our population die out rather than increase.

So, with all these new "landed immigrants" and "Canadians", what will BE truely Canadian after 20 years? Also as someone mentioned, more often then not, these immigrant populations are very segregated. Either by choice or not, and end up causing diffusion and problems. Do we need them? Yes, do we want them, YES! Do they help our country and our economy? Of course...

I think over-immigration would be a problem/factor in the future, not because they don't love Canada or want to be apart of it, we'll simply have an identity crises and the country won't be able to make up it's mind on issues! That's already a problem we face with current leadership.

We can all point out problems/issues. One thing I think most of us can agree on is the problem of Leadership, with any political party out there currently. We don't have very strong leadership at the moment, or any other stronger leaders to choose from really. Also, I think the only reason Mr.Chretien lasted so long is because no one wanted to see what would happen if we switched, too afraid. Well, most people anyway, most I say because he was in place for 11 years (I think? Right?) or around that many, so yes, most.

Leaders can make or break a nation, we have history to show for that. 

Lastly, old fashion values. Canada isn't the same Canada it was even 15 years ago. I suppose that's not surprising, but I was raised to be polite and courteous to people in general. Have manners etc. I remember when people who didn't know eachother would say hi passing one another on the street, most don't now. I make a point to be nice to people, open doors, say hi etc.

Our youth (I'm still part of it at 23 I suppose), are falling away from common sense and good values. More and more, you can see younger kids smoking, doing drugs, getting pregnant. Maybe it's every generation that does harder things younger, but, I think a 13 year old pregnant teen is abit far no>? When I was in highschool, it was still a shocker for a girl to get pregnant and drop out. Maybe the odd one here or there. Then again I was raised in a small town. 

Just my opinions, I've posted them here to see how they hold up, and what other's opinions are. Very good thread indeed.

Joe


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## Zipper (26 Mar 2005)

Good rant Joe. 

Just to point some thing out. 

Immigrants are all of us. We can all trace our ancestory to some other place going back a number of generations. Even the Natives had to cross a land bridge at one point in the foggy past.

"Visable minorities" are not going to be minorities any longer in most of our major cities within the next 12 years. So it won't be much longer after that before the "white northern european" is the minority in this country. We are all Canadian.

As for the kids going to hell?  ;D  From someone who IS 15-20 years older. It hasn't changed much. Actually all of the stats are either the same or +/- a few percentages. Don't worry, you'll live.


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## canadianblue (26 Mar 2005)

> Many many good points and opinions have been voiced in this thread. In fact, all the way from what I would consider good enough to be arguments before Mr.Dithers himself on how to run certain parts of the country/fix problems, to horribly inaccurate!...
> 
> Here's my 0.02 cents. Take it as you will, crap or gold.
> 
> ...



I agree with you 110%. I grew up in a small town and I learned to respect people in general. Nowadadys, it seems like its everybody for themselves, who gives a shit about the person next to you. I think alot of it has to do with what alot of this generation is hearing and seeing from the media. The type of message most kids get is do whatever the hell makes you feel happy, and to hell with anybody else.


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## JBP (26 Mar 2005)

> Immigrants are all of us. We can all trace our ancestory to some other place going back a number of generations. Even the Natives had to cross a land bridge at one point in the foggy past.
> 
> "Visable minorities" are not going to be minorities any longer in most of our major cities within the next 12 years. So it won't be much longer after that before the "white northern european" is the minority in this country. We are all Canadian.



Oh I do know that, my entire family on the dad's side is 100% Italian, grandparents born in Italy+dad too etc... I suppose what I was trying to get at, is that some of them don't care, or don't really think about "Canada". They just find it to be a fertile breeding ground I guess. Much better than many other countries. Nothing wrong with that, but we can't please everyone!!!

How are we suppose to hold a deep culture and a "Canadian" idolism when there is every kind of person pulling and tugging for every possible scenario under the sun? I just don't want our coutry to burst apart at the seams because we have no identity.   :-\



> As for the kids going to hell?      From someone who IS 15-20 years older. It hasn't changed much. Actually all of the stats are either the same or +/- a few percentages. Don't worry, you'll live.



So wait, U mean that, it's true?!?!   :-[ Each generation gets worse and worse eh? Now that sucks... I suppose next generation we'll have 10 year olds getting pregnant. If the human body adapts that far!!! God, could you imagine... In all seriousness though, there has to be a breaking or stopping point. It's really bad, hardcore drugs infest the highschools. It's damn bad...

Anyway...



> Good rant Joe.



Thank you.


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## Zipper (26 Mar 2005)

Pte (R) Joe said:
			
		

> Oh I do know that, my entire family on the dad's side is 100% Italian, grandparents born in Italy+dad too etc... I suppose what I was trying to get at, is that some of them don't care, or don't really think about "Canada". They just find it to be a fertile breeding ground I guess. Much better than many other countries. Nothing wrong with that, but we can't please everyone!!!
> 
> How are we suppose to hold a deep culture and a "Canadian" idolism when there is every kind of person pulling and tugging for every possible scenario under the sun? I just don't want our country to burst apart at the seams because we have no identity.  :-\



Don't worry. Your dad is probably thinking more like and Italian. but the fact that you ask these questions means that you don't. Your a Canadian of Italian descent. Its up to you how to interrupt that.



			
				Pte (R) Joe said:
			
		

> So wait, U mean that, it's true?!?!  :-[ Each generation gets worse and worse eh? Now that sucks... I suppose next generation we'll have 10 year olds getting pregnant. If the human body adapts that far!!! God, could you imagine... In all seriousness though, there has to be a breaking or stopping point. It's really bad, hardcore drugs infest the highschools. It's darn bad...



No no no...   ...sheesh. 

Things are NO different today then they were when I was your age. At least statistically. Otherwise I'm still wondering how high those shirts can go, and how low the belt will be worn? But oh well.


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## JBP (26 Mar 2005)

> I agree with you 110%. I grew up in a small town and I learned to respect people in general. Nowadadys, it seems like its everybody for themselves, who gives a shit about the person next to you. I think alot of it has to do with what alot of this generation is hearing and seeing from the media. The type of message most kids get is do whatever the hell makes you feel happy, and to hell with anybody else.



Yeah, it seems the media has a HUGE part in it. I live right on the border to the USA, we get all the US channels/radio etc. U name it. Half of everything around here is American owned really. But it's not just the Americans, really. It's all the media advertising, Canadian, American, you name it! It seems as if they're trying to brainwash the kids to be like this these days...

My girlfriend used to work with teens who were in closed custody (lock and key) half-way houses. The mentality with these kids was, "You stole your dad's car, got your 14 year old girlfriend pregant, and robbed a house?!?! Yo dude, that is so wicked! That's heat man, I'll have to top that before I turn 18 so I don't go to real jail Yo! Word up!"....  :

When I was a teenager, if you did something like that and bragged about it, we'd say: "Your a f*cking idiot, your going to be a looser and crackhead for the rest of your life if you keep that up. See you in jail along with the rest of your looser friends f*ckhead!!!"...  

That's a generalization, but the worst people did when I was in highschool for, 90% of the drug users, was pot. Mushrooms also, and at the end, extacy apparently made it's big wave... And I graduated and that was it...

I dunno, it just seems that "hip-hop" and "badass" is the way to go these days. Regardless of the consequences...


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## BDG.CalgHighrs (26 Mar 2005)

Don't know if it has been mentioned already, but people conserned about this subject should read J.L. Granatstein "Who Killed the Canadian Armed Forces", Douglas Bland "Canada without Armed Forces" and  Andrew Cohen "While Canada Slept (how we lost our place in the world)".


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## daniel h. (26 Mar 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Why does it matter to you who owns the companies?




Foreign companies have even less loyalty than ours do, and can use transfer pricing (overcharging their Canadian branch-plant for items) to hide income and avoid paying taxes. That being said, corporations barely pay one-fifth of the tax they paid 50 years ago. They used to pay 50% of all th tax, now under 10%.


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## daniel h. (26 Mar 2005)

Infanteer said:
			
		

> What were we before NAFTA?   Google "Trudeau's Pirouette" and see how he did.
> 
> I think, when it comes to economics, some basic laws of gravity apply - Io won't be leaving Jupiter's orbit anytime soon....




Before NAFTA we had Trudeau's FIRA and operated under GATT (WTO) which was at least preferrable. The NEP established our right to govern our affairs. But yeah, we still had tonnes of branch plants. NAFTA just sped the takeover up. Not to suggest all is lost. It isn't. But, we have to play by our own rules to improve. Playing by the rules of neo-liberalism won't work. The U.S. simply has too much capital for us to avoid intervention. Europe and Japan allow 5-10% foreign ownership at most--we have over 40%. Well over 50% in oil and gas. 100% in automobiles.


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## daniel h. (26 Mar 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Good rant Joe.
> 
> Just to point some thing out.
> 
> ...




I've heard the argument and used to believe it. However, technically Canada was the French homeland [new France] and the British colony, British North America. It's impossible to be an immigrant to a coutnry you found. Visible minorities are 16% of Canada, and over 50% in the old cities of Toronto and Vancouver. I'd be nicer to Trudeau if we had voted for official multiculturalism, but the polls tell a different story about Canadians enthusiasm, or lack thereof. Change isn't always necessary and beneficial, and if they wanted us to have more kids they could give us something to live for. The Liberal notion of rapid, exciting change isn't something I'm a big fan of.


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## canadianblue (26 Mar 2005)

> I dunno, it just seems that "hip-hop" and "badass" is the way to go these days.



I actaully read an article about how some african american leaders were attacking the hip hop culture being adopted amongst the nations youths. It's creating a huge problem in my own opinion, because alot of people are starting to think that black means cop killing, gangsta living, nailing bitchs, and killing others. Have any of you ever watched MTV or VH1, the type of lifestyle they usually support is individualistic, and most kids tend to idolize people like 50 cent, Tupac Shakur, as well as NWA. I watched a documentary with 50 cent, and in it whenever he saw a police cruiser he ran away, and their was a bike police officer a few feet away from him, and he got one of his gang members to go try to grab his gun. WTF. Thats the type of person this generation is modelling itself upon. It seems as though we as a society are more happy with seeing the failures of others, thats the reason reality TV is doing so well. I watched a movie the other day, and their was a preview for a new skater movie coming out, and they saw some police officers coming and they said "look out the pigs are coming". I'm just getting really sick of all of this BS. I mean pretty well anybody thats an authority figure is considered evil. I was even watching this one rap video with Tupac Shakur that made all of the police officers look evil, and he was your friendly drug dealing gangsta who was kissing babies.

Sorry for the rant


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## pbi (27 Mar 2005)

Futuretrooper said:
			
		

> I actaully read an article about how some african american leaders were attacking the hip hop culture being adopted amongst the nations youths. It's creating a huge problem in my own opinion, because alot of people are starting to think that black means cop killing, gangsta living, nailing bitchs, and killing others. Have any of you ever watched MTV or VH1, the type of lifestyle they usually support is individualistic, and most kids tend to idolize people like 50 cent, Tupac Shakur, as well as NWA. I watched a documentary with 50 cent, and in it whenever he saw a police cruiser he ran away, and their was a bike police officer a few feet away from him, and he got one of his gang members to go try to grab his gun. WTF. Thats the type of person this generation is modelling itself upon. It seems as though we as a society are more happy with seeing the failures of others, thats the reason reality TV is doing so well. I watched a movie the other day, and their was a preview for a new skater movie coming out, and they saw some police officers coming and they said "look out the pigs are coming". I'm just getting really sick of all of this BS. I mean pretty well anybody thats an authority figure is considered evil. I was even watching this one rap video with Tupac Shakur that made all of the police officers look evil, and he was your friendly drug dealing gangsta who was kissing babies.
> 
> Sorry for the rant



You have touched on something that I wonder about: the effect of gangsta rap on the young black males in our society (well-any "dispossessed" young people in general...). Now, I know that every generation of adults freaks out about their kids' music--we all went through that with our parents at one time or another. But I don't ever recall hearing, on such a grand scale, so much poisonous stuff. Here are the messages I get from 50 Cent, NWA, G-Unit, Tupac, etc:

-women are "ho's", "bitches" or "shorties" whose main function is to provide oral sex or be driven to heights of pleasure by the amazing skills (and massive equipment...) of the singer...;

-police are the enemy and are fair game...;

-the important things in life are cars, money, clothes, and guns-the more and the flashier the better;

-apparently nobody has a job or works to get anything they have;

-the response to anybody even looking at you sideways is along the lines of "_Yo--ni**a: Ah blow yo mother******g   head off wif mah gun. Yo a dead ni**ga_" or some other insanely violent and completely disproportionate response;

-drugs are a natural part of life and being a dealer is a legitimate lifestyle; 

-there are no "family values" because, apparently, there are no functional families (check out Eminem on THAT one!!) and

-life is defintely Hobbesian: nasty, brutal and short.

I don't recall hearing this to the same degree in other genres of modern music before. Given the apparently massive image and sales reach of these "artists". it's hard to believe that they aren't influential. I wonder if the message isn't: "Hey-do all this stuff and you can be rich and famous just like me. Screw playing the game by the rules because blacks won't get anywhere that way"

Or, as my daughter tells me, I'm just a square old white guy over-reacting to well-meant songs that are just telling kids how NOT to live.

Cheers.


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## mainerjohnthomas (27 Mar 2005)

Futuretrooper said:
			
		

> I actaully read an article about how some african american leaders were attacking the hip hop culture being adopted amongst the nations youths. It's creating a huge problem in my own opinion, because alot of people are starting to think that black means cop killing, gangsta living, nailing bitchs, and killing others. Have any of you ever watched MTV or VH1, the type of lifestyle they usually support is individualistic, and most kids tend to idolize people like 50 cent, Tupac Shakur, as well as NWA. I watched a documentary with 50 cent, and in it whenever he saw a police cruiser he ran away, and their was a bike police officer a few feet away from him, and he got one of his gang members to go try to grab his gun. WTF. Thats the type of person this generation is modelling itself upon. It seems as though we as a society are more happy with seeing the failures of others, thats the reason reality TV is doing so well. I watched a movie the other day, and their was a preview for a new skater movie coming out, and they saw some police officers coming and they said "look out the pigs are coming". I'm just getting really sick of all of this BS. I mean pretty well anybody thats an authority figure is considered evil. I was even watching this one rap video with Tupac Shakur that made all of the police officers look evil, and he was your friendly drug dealing gangsta who was kissing babies.
> 
> Sorry for the rant


       This is new?   In the thirties and fourties kids idolized Al Capone, Machinegun Kelly, John Dillinger, the zoot-suit look of the urban gangster punk became the fashion of the younger generation.   The glamorization of drug trade, and the flashy drug dealer, has been going hand in hand with the hard partying urban crowd since the twenties.   The generation that grew up with that fought WWII, and kicked some serious ass.   If that is the worst this generation has to worry about, we can relax.   The problem of mainstream apathy, of civil rights being used to empower criminals and disempower police is more worrysome.   Punks are not a threat to society, they are simply inevitable parasites.   Widespread acceptance of the emasculation of government, the courts, prison system, and police is a danger.   It is not that the parasites are dangerous, but the attitudes that hamstring our defences against them ARE dangerous.   The idea that these streetscum represent a threat to society is wrong, it is the society that is giving up the ability and right of the state to defend them that is the threat.


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## Kat Stevens (27 Mar 2005)

This hip-hop thing has become a running joke out here in BFN Alberta.  I live in probably the whitest town in Canada, and these kids drive around here in their boomcars, hat backwards, and Dads old carharts hanging down between their knees.  How these kids can "relate" to a media that was born out of urban poverty and violence is a mystery to me.  My daughter and her friends call these kids "whiggers", pretty distasteful, but funny nonetheless. Especially funny when they come from quite affluent, 2nd or 3rd generation Northern/Eastern European stock.....

CHIMO,  Kat


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## canadianblue (27 Mar 2005)

Same thing in my hometown. I live in a farming community, and its always funny to see kids thinking that their "gangsta". I just think their fucking idiots.


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## tomahawk6 (28 Mar 2005)

The good news is that most kids grow out of it. Thank god its just a phase.


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## pbi (28 Mar 2005)

I guess one thing I find concerning is how the "gangsta" BS translates so readily across ethnic and racial lines, encouraging the same sick attitudes in other cultures (I'm not so worried about suburban middle class wiggers and wannabees who probably will grow out of it..) Here in Winnipeg, where we have a very large urban aboriginal population (over 10% of the city's population) with disproportionately high violence, dysfunctional families, substance abuse, gang warfare(sound familiar...?) I see the young "warriors" cruising around the North Side with all the "gangsta" trappings. I see the same BS amongst a certain strain of young Asians living downtown as well. To me this kind of   music and the role model it brings is like a kind of anthem to these types: it tells them its not only "OK" to be like that: it's also cool and "bad". Another disturbing thing is the number of young girls attracted to this stupid role model of the "bad boy" which IMHO is ironic because in the gangsta culture the primary role of women is that of mattress.

To me it is far worse than the idolization of Capone or Machine Gun Kelly-you could argue that there was almost a chivalrous "Robin Hood" side to them (I don't, but you could....). I just don't see a single redeeming thing in this gangsta culture: the fact that it is so popular and so readily adopted bothers me. Hopefully, as other posters have suggested, kids will just grow out of it.

Cheers.


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## Edward Campbell (28 Mar 2005)

Here, from today's _Globe and Mail_ at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20050328.WINSOR28/TPStory is yet another take on Welsh's challenge.



> Global-role review is already doomed
> 
> By HUGH WINSOR
> Monday, March 28, 2005 Page A6
> ...



I think Winsor is correct when he says: _â ? The process has been so flawed, and so upstaged by eclectic decisions taken on the fly, that the review is already overtaken and discredited. This is especially the case with the handling of the Canada-United States relationship and, to a lesser extent, the re-tasking of the Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian International Development Agency.â ?_

The Department of   Foreign Affairs and the government are committed to a so-called 3D foreign policy: *D*iplomacy, *D*evelopment and *D*efence.   Winsor suggests, and I agree, that all three have been compromised, especially in Washington - which is the primary, only important _target audience_ for Welsh's *pizzazz* laden _magnum opus_.

DFAIT has an institutional mistrust of the Bush administration; the Department is chock-a-block full of Europhiles and Arabists; the Department, as an institution, opposed missile defence but was ready and willing to support joining because it seemed (and must, therefore, still seem - no matter what Mel Hurtig and Carolyn Parrish think) like a fair and reasonable _price_ to pay to accomplish the prime ministers stated overarching requirement of restoring Canada/US relations to a friendly neighbour/trusted ally level.   The Department agreed with the prime minister; officials, especially the most senior officials, were dismayed at the *fact* that Canada is, right now, being further and further _â ?... confined more permanently to the periphery as a dilettante, not to be taken seriously."_   This peripheral position is not just vis-ÃƒÂ -vis the United States, our _position_ with *all* of the world's powers, including Australia, Brazil, Chile, Denmark and so on down the list has deteriorated since 1993.


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## daniel h. (28 Mar 2005)

Edward Campbell said:
			
		

> Here, from today's _Globe and Mail_ at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20050328.WINSOR28/TPStory is yet another take on Welsh's challenge.
> 
> I think Winsor is correct when he says: _â ? The process has been so flawed, and so upstaged by eclectic decisions taken on the fly, that the review is already overtaken and discredited. This is especially the case with the handling of the Canada-United States relationship and, to a lesser extent, the re-tasking of the Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian International Development Agency.â ?_
> 
> ...




Get your CF-issues B.S. detector fired up. Notice how making Canada relevant never includes making us STRONGER, which would require those dirty words--protectionism and nationalism--the two things that have made the U.S. a world superpower. But our betters in Ottawa will have nothing of that for Canada.

Mel Hurtig and Carolyn Parrish, two people who lead a democratic push to oppose BMD which the majority of Canadians supported--but something tells me our "betters" aren't terribly interested in democracy anyway. Hurtig published a Canadian encyclopedia, gets the Order of Canada, writes books about Canada, and still he is an considered an embarassment, not a hero.


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## canadianblue (28 Mar 2005)

> Another disturbing thing is the number of young girls attracted to this stupid role model of the "bad boy" which IMHO is ironic because in the gangsta culture the primary role of women is that of mattress.



Hey, women are attracted to assholes


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## Infanteer (28 Mar 2005)

daniel h. said:
			
		

> Notice how making Canada relevant never includes making us STRONGER, which would require those dirty words--protectionism and nationalism--the two things that have made the U.S. a world superpower. But our betters in Ottawa will have nothing of that for Canada.



Uhh...when you consider that the three cornerstones of the post World War II global economy (of which the US is the hegemonic power) are GATT (which evolved into the WTO), the World Bank, and the IMF, I can't see how the hell you figure protectionism was responsible for making the US a world superpower.

IPE 101 my friend....



> Mel Hurtig and Carolyn Parrish, two people who lead a democratic push to oppose BMD which the majority of Canadians supported--but something tells me our "betters" aren't terribly interested in democracy anyway. Hurtig published a Canadian encyclopedia, gets the Order of Canada, writes books about Canada, and still he is an considered an embarassment, not a hero.



Probably an embarrassment because they base their entire notion of nationalism off the premise that the United States poses a clear and present danger to the existence of Canada.   I don't like to foist "Chicken Little" up as a national hero, despite their achievements....


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## Cdn Blackshirt (28 Mar 2005)

Optimistic at the time of Chretian's departure, I can barely put into words what a spineless disappointment Paul Martin has been.




Matthew.


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## mdh (28 Mar 2005)

> But senior U.S. officials are astonished by the eclectic way in which the decision was taken.



I love the way Hugh has carefully chosen his words in describing the absolute and total politicization of the foreign and defence review process. "Eclectic" makes it sound like there is some sort of cosmopolitan charm and creative energy suffusing the Great Minds of the Natural Corrupting Party.   

How about "balls up" as a more accurate term? 

In the current Ottawa environment DFAIT, Defence, and all the rest of the departments, I suspect, have next to zero influence in the formulation of policy - it's all being written (re-written) and approved by the PMO pols: Tim Murphy, David Herle, Scott Reid and Richard Mahoney et al.

Cheers, mdh


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## mainerjohnthomas (28 Mar 2005)

mdh said:
			
		

> In the current Ottawa environment DFAIT, Defence, and all the rest of the departments, I suspect, have next to zero influence in the formulation of policy - it's all being written (re-written) and approved by the PMO pols: Tim Murphy, David Herle, Scott Reid and Richard Mahoney et al.
> 
> Cheers, mdh


     Why would they include defence, intelligence, or foreign service professionals in drafting our foreign policy, the shock of coherent, competant mission statements and objectives would kill or cripple long time professionals in the armed, intelligence, and foreign services.  It should be obvious that ipsus ried and a half trained cabal of spin doctors and political bag handlers will continue to provide Canada the kind of foreign policy, and defence initiative that make us less relavent than Luxemberg.


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## Edward Campbell (28 Mar 2005)

mainerjohnthomas said:
			
		

> Why would they include defence, intelligence, or foreign service professionals in drafting our foreign policy, the shock of coherent, competant mission statements and objectives would kill or cripple long time professionals in the armed, intelligence, and foreign services.   It should be obvious that ipsus ried and a half trained cabal of spin doctors and political bag handlers will continue to provide Canada the kind of foreign policy, and defence initiative that make us less relavent than Luxemberg.



In fairness we should distinguish between a full blown _White Paper_ which is a fairly detailed statement of the government's policies and *intentions* (and which can be cited as an authority in budget submissions, etc) and a _policy review_ like the one which, as I understand it, Welsh is doing.

The _White Paper_ needs the combined inputs of the PMO and ministerial staffs *in support* of the senior civil service _mandarins_.   Good _White Papers_ can be dry and detailed; not so good ones can be filled with *pizzazz* â â€œ as was the failed (and written by Toronto based Tory _outsiders_) 1987 _White Paper_ tabled by then Defence Minister Perrin Beatty.   A _policy review_ should precede a _White Paper_; it should be, essentially, a _political_ document designed, in the 21st century, to sell the government's _goals_ to the _mandarins_ who will be expected to translate them into _achievable_ policies and intentions.   There is a role for the spin doctors and party hacks, flacks and bagmen in this _policy review_ process.

Both foreign and defence policy reviews also need an *agreed* (by government, including the PMO) 'Strategic Survey' â â€œ which should be produced, in private, by the foreign, trade, Bank of Canada and defence _mandarins_ and the intelligence community.   These are hard to develop and harder, much harder, to get accepted.

It used to be that the _policy review_ things were done in relative privacy and then _released_ at party policy conventions.   Since the latter have evolved into yet more 'sound bite mills' feeding the ever open maw of 24 hour television news channels the former have also been forced into a more public forum; thus Paul Martin's need for _*pizzazz*_ â â€œ everything has to be moved away from steak and towards sizzle.


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## JBP (28 Mar 2005)

> Another disturbing thing is the number of young girls attracted to this stupid role model of the "bad boy" which IMHO is ironic because in the gangsta culture the primary role of women is that of mattress.
> 
> Hey, women are attracted to assholes



You have no idea how true that is!!! I watched a special on discovery channel a few years back about it...

Basically, the "bad boy" apprently shows that these guys have "survival traits" somehow. And/or that they are natural leaders and would be good providers for children... Something about the way a woman is "programmed" to be attracted to a confident man....

Anyway... However that works, it ISN'T working I bet....

They do say confidence is the biggest attractor though.


----------



## mdh (28 Mar 2005)

> Since the latter have evolved into yet more 'sound bite mills' feeding the ever open maw of 24 hour television news channels the former have also been forced into a more public forum; thus Paul Martin's need for pizzazz â â€œ everything has to be moved away from steak and towards sizzle.



EC,

Isn't that the real issue? You're right about the policy development framework at the federal level - from Whitepaper to whitewash.   But does it matter? 

As you noted, it didn't matter in 1987, and from everything I've read to date, it doesn't look like it matters much today.

Is Ms. Welsh just the _infant terrible_ providing a rough draft before the adults take away the crayons and make the real decisions? It certainly appears that way -- with even an establishment journo like Hugh Winsor suggesting it's all an eclectic waste of time. 

With Welsh's crazy talk about custom unions and ending agricultural subsidies, it's little wonder that the egg and chicken marketing board people aren't signing on to dream the dream of a regnant Canada.

What's left of Ms. Welsh's musings then? Only one concept that I can see: Canada as a "model citizen" - or more succintly a model welfare state with a multi-cult adjunct that ought to be emulated (if not exported) around the world. (Forget about the market, Bangladesh, it's pay equity you really need.)

In short, the prevailing ideology of the state is, so to speak, writ large, and presto, Canada has a foreign policy.

The Liberal Party has now reached the point where it believes that statism is the answer to all the globe's problems.  There may not be much pizzazz in that - but it's the one thing that the ruling party believes in without question.

cheers, all, mdh


----------



## mdh (28 Mar 2005)

> As a side note to Mr. Martin, an effective and stimulating vision and plan for Canada is not something that will look good when George Stroumbolopolus (or however you spell it) says it for you on Much Music and The Hour.




I see Canada as a "soft and cuddly" power. Picture a neo-aggressive Sweden confronting rogue states that allow their parents to spank children - that's where I think our future lies,   

cheers, mdh


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## BDG.CalgHighrs (29 Mar 2005)

If anyone wants to read a 14 page research paper on this topic I have one lying around.


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## canadianblue (29 Mar 2005)

Yeah, nothin turns on a girl more then a guy that does heroin, hates police officers, and takes advantage of other people, as well as cheat on them behind their back. :


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## pbi (29 Mar 2005)

> Basically, the "bad boy" apprently shows that these guys have "survival traits" somehow. And/or that they are natural leaders and would be good providers for children... Something about the way a woman is "programmed" to be attracted to a confident man....



Survival traits? Who thought this one up? What's the average life span of one of these people? Isn't it true that gunshot wounds are the single most common cause of death amongst young black males in the US? And, anyway, "survive" to do what? Go to jail?

I agree fully that a certain slice of women seem to be attracted to bad boys-IIRC there is a certain type of women who engages in fantasy relationships with dangerous criminals: writing them letters, trying to visit them in prison, etc. Perhaps this is related to the condition that makes battered and abused women keep returning loyally (and stupidly...) to the same man who beats them, despite the urging of family and friends to leave.

Anyway, aberrant female psychology aside, I guess we're done on this gangsta thing.

Cheers.


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## JBP (29 Mar 2005)

> Anyway, aberrant female psychology aside, I guess we're done on this gangsta thing.
> 
> Cheers.



Yeah, I think we beat it to pieces... Just another note on female psychology though, when Ted Bundy went to jail, THOUSANDS of women wrote him letters and tried to visit him while he was awaiting his trails and then, finally, execution.... 

He was even allowed a final congecal visit apparently towards the end.....

 :


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## vangemeren (29 Mar 2005)

This is interesting, this topic seems to have changed course since I posted on the first or second page. It has changed to a young people are doomed theme.

I have always grown up in smaller towns and cities. I just laugh when I see highschool kids that try to act all gangster and all that in the inner-city hood of Petawawa/Pembroke. I have a younger brother who  just turned 13 and I don't like a lot of his wiener friends. They always seemed to satisfied with setting low goals and failing to achieve them. However, they expect to be rich and successful like their idols.
(Well it looks like I'm starting a rant) I think there has to better role models than ones that espouse violence, gratuitous sexualism (some is good for me at the age of 20, but not for my brother and his wiener friends), and drugs. Many of the celebrities (in my opinion) have wealth through previous generations of hard work. They don't have real jobs and sit around spending their money. What young people don't realise is that 99% of the time any kind of wealth is earned through hard work, some form of education or workable skill and time. I guess this is why I don't idolize celebrities, watch ET, have any pity when something bad happens in terms of materialism (for the most part I still have sensitivy to natural death or tragic loss) or give two ^%$#!$$%^&%#@ about what they do from day to day. (I really don't care about where they went to go shopping for a food dish for their pet that is worth as much as half my house).

okay I'm done my rant now. It seems to be a cross of the new general theme of the thread and materialism. Maybe I should start a new thread: "Is Society Doomed?"


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## Zipper (29 Mar 2005)

Vangeemeren - You've hit upon a good point. Much of today's youth are falling into that "I can do nothing and still be rich" trap. This is not exclusive to Canada nor North America, although it is more previlant in NA because of the video culture that kids are growing up in these days.

Its been well documented that more and more men are staying home with mom and living off of the poge. In the 60's I believe it was that less then 20% of men stayed at home beyond the age of 30. Today it is closer to 50%. This is scary. 

The idea that our culture is aging and will be leaving the workforce in droves is well on its way. And yet we have far less people to fill these jobs because their staying home, not getting an education, and not living productive lives. We're breeding a culture of slack jawed urban slobs.

What can you do? Get an education. Eat right. Turn the TV off and read. Get out from in front of the computer and play a sport. Move out on your own and live responsibly. Don't live on a credit card. Get a life. And most of all...                                         ...pass these things on to our kids!!! In other words, be a good parent.

We've got our work cut out for us.


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## vangemeren (29 Mar 2005)

> Its been well documented that more and more men are staying home with mom and living off of the poge. In the 60's I believe it was that less then 20% of men stayed at home beyond the age of 30. Today it is closer to 50%. This is scary.



I have a friend that is a foreign exchange student from Finland. He said over there that youth become independent at a younger age than Canadians do. He said that some of his friend were living on their own for a year or two before 18.


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## JBP (29 Mar 2005)

> Its been well documented that more and more men are staying home with mom and living off of the poge. In the 60's I believe it was that less then 20% of men stayed at home beyond the age of 30. Today it is closer to 50%. This is scary.




Ah, another good statistic, in my hometown, the population on paper is just a scratch above 18,000 people. Guess how many unemployed???

You'd sh*t...

And I checked in on my hometown's website: over 12,000... It's actually 12 and a half...

We have one main "downtown" area called "Front" street... Guess how many BARS there are? 5 BARS!!!! On 1 little street, how do they stay open? Hmmm.. I don't know Johnny Bloggins!!! Guess who the town ALWAYS votes for in ANY election... NDP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lol.... 

Not saying anything directly against NDP, just a hint that they always fight hard for the "working man" and "poor" of society and always want more money for social programs... I suppose that's fine, if the money these slobs recieved actually WENT to thier families or for good things.

Put all these loosers through boot camp, then force them to get jobs!!! 

There are very real and legitimate cases of unemployed people in my hometown, like my sister who has an accident-induced brain injury and now can't walk etc etc... Permanently disabled. But whenever I drive/walk/bike or swear down Front St, the bars are always at least half full, even in the middle of the day!!!! Drives me crazy...

Joe


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## Zipper (30 Mar 2005)

Pte (R) Joe said:
			
		

> Not saying anything directly against NDP, just a hint that they always fight hard for the "working man" and "poor" of society and always want more money for social programs... I suppose that's fine, if the money these slobs recieved actually WENT to thier families or for good things.
> 
> Put all these loosers through boot camp, then force them to get jobs!!!



Funny? Sounds like you are? Ah well. 

You are right to a point. The fact that they give money out without accountability is what is wrong. So the intention is fine, but the application is all wrong. Easier said then done of course, but if your going to try to help people there has to be a willingness on their part to help themselves and their families.

So if we could get an NDP type intention combined with a conservative style of delivery and checks and balances, we "might" just have a more workable system. To bad the two sides would rather spit at each other then work together.


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## TCBF (30 Mar 2005)

" We're breeding a culture of slack jawed urban slobs.

What can you do? Get an education. Eat right. Turn the TV off and read. Get out from in front of the computer and play a sport. Move out on your own and live responsibly. Don't live on a credit card. Get a life. And most of all...                                         ...pass these things on to our kids!!! In other words, be a good parent.

We've got our work cut out for us."

Very well said, Zipper.  

Tom


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## Cdn Blackshirt (30 Mar 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Funny? Sounds like you are? Ah well.
> 
> You are right to a point. The fact that they give money out without accountability is what is wrong. So the intention is fine, but the application is all wrong. Easier said then done of course, but if your going to try to help people there has to be a willingness on their part to help themselves and their families.
> 
> So if we could get an NDP type intention combined with a conservative style of delivery and checks and balances, we "might" just have a more workable system. To bad the two sides would rather spit at each other then work together.



My biggest pet peave remains individuals on any sort of taxpayer-funded support (EI, Welfare, Indian Affairs payments) spending their money on cigarettes, beer and booze.

The fact the anti-poverty coalitions biitch about them being below the poverty line and unable to afford diapers while resting their feet on an empty 24's, and having drag just makes my blood boil. 

In my world:
1)  Mandatory Drug Testing for anyone wishing to obtain government benefits of any sort.  No test, no money.  
2)  Benefits paid directly onto "EI/Welfare-identified debit card" (and if they're embarrassed, they'll get the hell off) that are only usable at approved locations such as Loblaws, A&P and Shopper's Drug Mart
3)  I'd raise the minimum wage and lower benefits to a point that working was actually worth more than sitting on one's fat rump (there's a hell of a concept).

This isn't rocket science.  

It's just the fact that our country is so friggin' pussified as to have become embarrassing....




Matthew.


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## canadianblue (30 Mar 2005)

> So if we could get an NDP type intention combined with a conservative style of delivery and checks and balances, we "might" just have a more workable system. To bad the two sides would rather spit at each other then work together.



Actaully Alberta used to have a system similar to that under social credit. Some people won't admit it, but COOP's in a way were socialist enterprises. However I think that we should make a new system were instead of sending off welfare payments, we should make work for people who are unemployed. If the people don't work, then to bad, looks like they won't be getting any money. I actaully have a friend whose parents spoon feed him, whenever he wants money from them, he gets it. So far the kid has a computer with high speed internet, XBOX, PS2, Gamecube, 24inch TV, all in his room. His parents only started to spoil him at the end of his second year of high school, now he skips school to play World of Warcraft in his bedroom :. The problem is with the parents, my parents gave me a car, but that was it, for everything else I had to work and get money to buy anything that I wanted. I never got handouts, I'm happier that I didn't, because then I'd be a spoiled brat. If the parents were to tell their kids at lets say 16 that they had to get a job because they wouldn't recieve their allowance, then I think we'd see fewer and fewer of these spoiled brats. 

The whole gangsta thing is stupid to. Kids think that if they get money then they will have the whole world in their hands. I was talking to this one kid about money, and I said that I'd be happier earning about 40,000$ a year working as a police officer then earning 10,000,000$ a year working only for money and nothing else. Guess what the response was, "Well if you have money then you can get any job you want". How the **** does it make a difference, if I'm applying for an MP, they won't say, this guy's rich lets give him the job. Another thing said was, well with lots of money you can have any woman you want. But I don't think I'd be happier if everybody just liked me because I'm rich. I was even at a job fair, and guess what was the first thing people looked at when looking for a job, the amount they'd make in a year.


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## I_am_John_Galt (30 Mar 2005)

squealiox said:
			
		

> john gault,
> 
> maybe mark steyn's got a fancier bloomberg terminal than i do, but i haven't been seeing any great stampede, or even trickle, of investments away from the currencies, stocks and bonds of europe or canada, or any latin-america-style warnings of political risk from any of the credit ratings agencies about these economies.
> 
> ...



I think you've missed the point: the slow decay has already been priced into markets.   One would only expect to see a change in trends in the event of a sudden change for the worse (increasing socialism) or better (less socialism).  The disparity in incomes are the result of the differing levels of socialism: the differing levels of growth also reflect the increasing disparity in the level of socialization; that is, more socialism = less wealth (which is exactly what one would expect from an economic system that is concerned with the primacy of wealth distribution over creation).  The historic evidence suggests that socialism doesn't 'freeze' the level of wealth (so that redistribution is a zero-sum game) but actually _destroys _it and thus the slide into socialism results less wealth for everyone, which was Steyn's point.




			
				Cdn Blackshirt said:
			
		

> My biggest pet peave remains individuals on any sort of taxpayer-funded support (EI, Welfare, Indian Affairs payments) spending their money on cigarettes, beer and booze.
> 
> The fact the anti-poverty coalitions biitch about them being below the poverty line and unable to afford diapers while resting their feet on an empty 24's, and having drag just makes my blood boil.



The "social safety net" is a hammock!  People know their needs and basic wants will be taken care of by "the government" so what incentive to work is there for the individual with (real or perceived) "limited" earning potential?


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## BDG.CalgHighrs (30 Mar 2005)

Cdn Blackshirt:

It's not rocket Science, nor is it as simple as you want to make it.

For starters, raising minimum wage decreases demand (among employers) for unskilled labour which means less jobs (cyclical unemployment). Less Jobs means higher demand for EI. I'd dispense completely with your third point. It's not necessary, and won't help.

Your other two suggestions are just fine, and I would even add to them by saying that EI should not be available to seasonal workers. (BC fisherman can worf 5 weeks in the summer and collect EI the rest of the year) Also, government doll to unprofitable sectors (I don't know, maybe fisheries, miners etc.) needs to be cut. It provides incentive for too many people to crowd in and try and get lucrative government subsidies while not actualy providing anything for the economy. 

There is so much wrong with EI right now, it's ridiculous. Yet Mr. Martin has just made it easier to collect benefits. Why hasn't anything been done? 

Well Simple Politics. High cyclical unemployment is localized to certain areas in Canada. These areas represent voting blocks. If you cut EI you lose seats in the house.


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## daniel h. (30 Mar 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> I think you've missed the point: the slow decay has already been priced into markets.     One would only expect to see a change in trends in the event of a sudden change for the worse (increasing socialism) or better (less socialism).   The disparity in incomes are the result of the differing levels of socialism: the differing levels of growth also reflect the increasing disparity in the level of socialization; that is, more socialism = less wealth (which is exactly what one would expect from an economic system that is concerned with the primacy of wealth distribution over creation).   The historic evidence suggests that socialism doesn't 'freeze' the level of wealth (so that redistribution is a zero-sum game) but actually _destroys _it and thus the slide into socialism results less wealth for everyone, which was Steyn's point.
> 
> 
> The "social safety net" is a hammock!   People know their needs and basic wants will be taken care of by "the government" so what incentive to work is there for the individual with (real or perceived) "limited" earning potential?




If someone wants to work in a non-service indsutry job, then they'll usually be out of luck. We have sent our manufacturing jobs to China, and our research and development jobs to the U.S. because we send them raw-resources rather than designing and buillding things in Canada.

The social safety net wouldn't be as necessary if our government cared about creating jobs. I have friends who were in the aerospace industry and were laid off. They had to live on welfare because they were depressed and have no job opportunities. They are now shovelling snow for a living. They used to be repairing commercial jets. There really aren't many good jobs for labour or research in Canada.


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## daniel h. (30 Mar 2005)

Pte. Gaisford said:
			
		

> Cdn Blackshirt:
> 
> It's not rocket Science, nor is it as simple as you want to make it.
> 
> ...





Paul Martin was the guy who made it almost impossible to get E.I.....he made it so those fired or those who quit didn't qualify--only those laid off. He used over 40 billion of the E.I. fund that workers paid into to pay the banks to reduce our debt. Rich [banks] get richer, workers [that means soldiers too] get screwed.


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## I_am_John_Galt (30 Mar 2005)

daniel h. said:
			
		

> If someone wants to work in a non-service indsutry job, then they'll usually be out of luck. We have sent our manufacturing jobs to China, and our research and development jobs to the U.S. because we send them raw-resources rather than designing and buillding things in Canada.


That is a fallacy, we haven't 'sent' jobs anywhere: through taxation and social policy we have priced ourselves out of the market.  In a similar vein, we don't 'send' our raw resources anywhere: we SELL them.



> The social safety net wouldn't be as necessary if our government cared about creating jobs. I have friends who were in the aerospace industry and were laid off. They had to live on welfare because they were depressed and have no job opportunities. They are now shovelling snow for a living. They used to be repairing commercial jets. There really aren't many good jobs for labour or research in Canada.


That really sucks for your friends, and I don't mean to appear insensitive, but government doesn't create jobs: it merely displaces them.  Subsidies to the aerospace industry (worldwide) evidence the economic disaster that is corporate welfare (i.e., directing wealth from sources that created it to sources that merely consume it) and how out-of-hand it can get (the words 'death-spiral' come to mind).  Andrew Coyne had an interesting editorial on the subject: http://andrewcoyne.com/archives/003913.php


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## a_majoor (31 Mar 2005)

The fact that so many of these arguments are still being raised only speaks to the abysmal level of education in this country. Most of the concepts that John Gault are effectively demolishing are quickly dealt with in any introductory economics class. The fact that so many people  like daniel h, James Laxiter or our political class draw the opposite conclusions indicates that either:

a. They were not paying attention in class

b. They do not look out the window and pay attention to what is happening around them

c. They didn't take economics, history, accounting or basic business ever.

d. A perverse view of history and economics is being taught, which is directly at varience to the theory and practice of the real world.

e. All of the above


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## Lance Wiebe (31 Mar 2005)

Here is also a good report by the Fraser Institute that does an excellent job of explaining why we lose out on manufacturing jobs........as was published in the Fredericton Daily Gleaner.

http://canadaeast.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050329/DGOPINION02/203290494&SearchID=73203641400857


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## daniel h. (31 Mar 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> That is a fallacy, we haven't 'sent' jobs anywhere: through taxation and social policy we have priced ourselves out of the market.   In a similar vein, we don't 'send' our raw resources anywhere: we SELL them.
> That really sucks for your friends, and I don't mean to appear insensitive, but government doesn't create jobs: it merely displaces them.   Subsidies to the aerospace industry (worldwide) evidence the economic disaster that is corporate welfare (i.e., directing wealth from sources that created it to sources that merely consume it) and how out-of-hand it can get (the words 'death-spiral' come to mind).   Andrew Coyne had an interesting editorial on the subject: http://andrewcoyne.com/archives/003913.php




Letting Bombardier die would be even worse than subsidizing them. I do think we should get shares or the loans should get repaid, but every country does this. 

The government can do whatever it wants. We have crown corporations in this country that employ over 2.5 million people. Bombardier used to be a bunch of different crown (public) corporations. So was Hawker Siddeley (now BAE systems) in Britain.

The government can also indirectly stimulate jobs by changing economic priorities from low inflation for the rich to job creation. It's almost as if the 1950s and 1960s never happened to some people.


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## daniel h. (31 Mar 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> The fact that so many of these arguments are still being raised only speaks to the abysmal level of education in this country. Most of the concepts that John Gault are effectively demolishing are quickly dealt with in any introductory economics class. The fact that so many people   like daniel h, James Laxiter or our political class draw the opposite conclusions indicates that either:
> 
> a. They were not paying attention in class
> 
> ...




If I get a warning then so should this guy. Stop insulting my intelligence.


Did it ever occur to you that there is more than one way to run a country, and that I may simply have job creation as a higher priority? Goodness. I


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## Cdn Blackshirt (31 Mar 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> The fact that so many of these arguments are still being raised only speaks to the abysmal level of education in this country. Most of the concepts that John Gault are effectively demolishing are quickly dealt with in any introductory economics class. The fact that so many people   like daniel h, James Laxiter or our political class draw the opposite conclusions indicates that either:
> 
> a. They were not paying attention in class
> 
> ...



Actually I took advanced micro, advanced macro, international economics, business in university.

I took my Canadian Securities Course (stock brokerage requiring ability to analyze financial statements, etc) and came in the top 5% of my class on my first attempt.

In my professional experience I have hired, fired and managed groups of 25+, done bookkeeping, submitted source deductions, GST for a company with gross revenues over $1m, and produced then implemented numerous feasibility studies and business plans.

Tax Cut and their true Stimulatory Effect
Current economic models (and economists) are absolutely foolhardy in that they ignore the impact of free access to a domestic market.   Quite simply tax cuts are only highly stimulatory and create jobs in a closed-cycle economy. If on the other hand tax cuts are provided that are then spent by consumers on imported goods (let's say Chinese goods), you have instead just taken money out of federal coffers and created a great stimulus in the nation supplying those imports.

Tax Cuts and who gets them
There is a traditional economic belief that whoever gets those tax cuts is moot and it is simply a dollar issue.   That is in fact totally false.   As someone with disposable income I am far more likely to save my funds and reinvest in equity (some domestic/some foreign) that someone closer to the poverty line who will immediately dump those newfound funds back into the economy to the benefit of everyone.

The Minimum Wage
Like tax cuts for low income earners, any boost to the minimum wage is immediately recycled back into the economy as those funds are immediately spent.   In essence, a raise in the minimum wage not only creates a better standard of living for those earning the minimum wage, but also for all the businesses who sell to those minimum wage earners, and their shareholders.     You have the added benefit as previously mentioned which is as working becomes more attractive than collecting EI, more individuals will choose to work, lowering the demand for EI, and lowering EI premiums for the rest of us.   Lastly, as you bring people from subsistence to have at least some disposable income, I would argue you greatly reduce the likelihood that family will resort to criminal activity out of desperation (which again due to policing and court costs is another indirect method of reducing taxation on the general public).   

What does effect domestic labour demand is foreign nations with different labour standards who intentionally deflate their currency in order to create a competitive imbalance and corporate entities with no loyalty to either their home nation or their workers as they scour the world in pursuit of higher profits (and the resulting stock option gains).

Bottom Line:     If you want to see your tenets of traditional economics at work, have a look at the US economy, and before you point to the most recent number indicating US GDP growth at 3.8%, try calculating that GDP in a bundle of world currencies since the Bush tax cuts went into effect and you will see the US economy in fact not expanded at all, but instead has dramatically contracted....

I'll look forward to your response....



Matthew.


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## a_majoor (31 Mar 2005)

Job creation eh?

See point "b", and ask yourself how many jobs have been created by the billion dollar boondoggle, sending $100,000,000 to "Liberal friendly" advertising agencies, permanent welfare traps in the seasonal industries or all the corporate welfare the various levels of government blow off every year.

The answer is "very few".

If you are in fact concerned with economic growth and job creation, then look south and explain how there is 1/2 the unemployment rate and 2X the economic growth without reference to the low tax and regulatory environment the Bush administration is implimenting. As a control measure, you can also look at the general trends between the "Red" states, which are also implimenting such policies, and the "Blue" states, which tend to be high tax and high regulatory environments.

Empirical evidence from over 70 countries demonstrates that low taxes, limited regulation and free trade are the drivers of economic growth and prosperity. There are other ways to run a country, I happen to approve of using proven policies with positive outcomes over the present way Canada is being run.


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## Cdn Blackshirt (31 Mar 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> Job creation eh?
> 
> See point "b", and ask yourself how many jobs have been created by the billion dollar boondoggle, sending $100,000,000 to "Liberal friendly" advertising agencies, permanent welfare traps in the seasonal industries or all the corporate welfare the various levels of government blow off every year.
> 
> ...



At what point did I say I was in favour of the billion dollar boondoggle or the Liberal Adscam.  I am also not in favour of ACOA or the Quebec development agency.  Nor am I in favour of how equalization is calculated nor tax-exempt status for natives.

If you're Canadian, you're Canadian....everyone should play by the same set of rules.

I am in favour of harmonized regulations within trade blocks (NAFTA) and the fact that balanced budgets aren't good enough (believe in a mandatory legislated debt repayment).  I also do believe in tax cuts and think tax increases given the size of bureaucracies and what they deliver is obnoxious.  

RE:  US Growth Rates - Once again, measure US growth in Yen or Euros and US growth has been negative which has to do with WHO got the funds and how they've been spent, and the trade imbalance with China.

Bottom Line:  I don't have time to give you my full economic plan (I will post it sometime in the next week) but lower tax rates are good, as long as they don't undermine the fiscal standing of the government (creating indirect debt on each individual) and where possible, your trade policy should ensure imports come from nations with unmanipulated currencies, similar labour laws and having open markets to your products, so that the tax cut spending will eventually boomerang back.




Matthew.


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## mdh (31 Mar 2005)

> Tax Cut and their true Stimulatory Effect
> Current economic models (and economists) are absolutely foolhardy in that they ignore the impact of free access to a domestic market.   Quite simply tax cuts are only highly stimulatory and create jobs in a closed-cycle economy. If on the other hand tax cuts are provided that are then spent by consumers on imported goods (let's say Chinese goods), you have instead just taken money out of federal coffers and created a great stimulus in the nation supplying those imports.



I wouldn't call Milton Friedman foolhardy and the attempt to dismiss all current tax cut theory is IMHO unconvincing.   Taking money out of "federal coffers" and returning it to the consumer is almost always more efficient (assuming you believe in the primacy of the market) -- and why would you assume that all tax cuts would be spent on "Chinese goods" anyway?



> Tax Cuts and who gets them
> There is a traditional economic belief that whoever gets those tax cuts is moot and it is simply a dollar issue.   That is in fact totally false.   As someone with disposable income I am far more likely to save my funds and reinvest in equity (some domestic/some foreign) that someone closer to the poverty line who will immediately dump those newfound funds back into the economy to the benefit of everyone.



Totally false in your view - but hardly a proven case. Tax cuts for those at the poverty line are already an orthodoxy in this country - the real question is why governments won't give the middle class any meaningful tax breaks so they can follow your example and reinvest their own money as they see fit. And you are missing one argument that transcends (narrow) economic theory - namely the moral one. It's not government's money in the first place, but Canadians have allowed themselves to be beaten into submission by a finely-tuned propaganda machine driven by special interest groups (and their media/political allies) arguing that confiscatory tax rates are somehow a signal of "compassion" or a natural feature of being Canadian. They are neither.




> The Minimum Wage
> Like tax cuts for low income earners, any boost to the minimum wage is immediately recycled back into the economy as those funds are immediately spent.   In essence, a raise in the minimum wage not only creates a better standard of living for those earning the minimum wage, but also for all the businesses who sell to those minimum wage earners, and their shareholders.     You have the added benefit as previously mentioned which is as working becomes more attractive than collecting EI, more individuals will choose to work, lowering the demand for EI, and lowering EI premiums for the rest of us.   Lastly, as you bring people from subsistence to have at least some disposable income, I would argue you greatly reduce the likelihood that family will resort to criminal activity out of desperation (which again due to policing and court costs is another indirect method of reducing taxation on the general public).



This assumes that businesses will simply magically absorb the minimum wage increase (Something the "traditional" economists at the Canadian Federation of Indepedent Business would take issue with) - usually it's passed on to consumers or the business creates fewer jobs. I'm not sure how that improves everybody's standard of living - it can have the opposite effect of creating structural unemployment. EI has merely perpetuated a cycle of poverty in the regions - most of those populations ought to be encouraged to migrate to find gainful employment. It's kept in place because of political reasons - Martin - in one of his few moments of policy clarity - actually cut EI rates in the mid-90s because this damaging effect was recognized.   It was restored in the late 90s because the Liberal Party was losing support in the Maritimes.



> What does effect domestic labour demand is foreign nations with different labour standards who intentionally deflate their currency in order to create a competitive imbalance and corporate entities with no loyalty to either their home nation or their workers as they scour the world in pursuit of higher profits (and the resulting stock option gains).



Much like Canada did through the 1990s.   We pursued a deliberate policy of currency deflation to boost exports at the expense of productivity and now we are paying the price.   Higher taxes, regulation, and escalating minimum wage rates aren't going to help boost productivity. And isn't this an odd position for a securities guy to take? I would expect that companies should "scour" the world for profits and enrich shareholders (of which I am one since I hold stocks in an RSP).



> Bottom Line:     If you want to see your tenets of traditional economics at work, have a look at the US economy, and before you point to the most recent number indicating US GDP growth at 3.8%, try calculating that GDP in a bundle of world currencies since the Bush tax cuts went into effect and you will see the US economy in fact not expanded at all, but instead has dramatically contracted....



Why should we have to measure US economic performance as a "bundle of world currencies"? Denying the obvious - a 3.8 per cent GDP growth rate - and trying to argue that it's a dramatic contraction sounds - again - rather unconvincing. The US economy remains flexible and dynamic despite the impact of the dot-com recession and the war in Iraq.   Bush's tax cuts are working to achieve renewed growth.

In sum, if I am interpreting your arguments correctly (and If I'm not please correct me), then Germany, for example, ought to be the greatest economic success story in history - it has high minimum wages, lots of regulation, high taxes, aggressive unions, generous social programs. 

In fact, it's become an economic disaster with the highest unemployment rates since the 1930s.   

The same goes with France which also practiced the ultimate experiment in a type of extreme minimum wage policy - the short work week.   It has been abandoned as a failure. France continues its slide into economic disaster.

Or if you prefer a home grown example - how about Ontario under McGuinty? - higher taxes have been imposed through the health premium, more red tape is being created with each legislative session, the public sector unions are back in force, the minimum wage has been increased - so why isn't Ontario booming?

If we are going to meet the challenges of a 21st century economy we need to do a better job in encouraging enterpreneurial talent, not engaging in the same old failed policies. And while I understand the need for a "balanced approach" on deficits, the massive surpluses created by the federal Liberals have been used as fuel for renewed expansion of the state - not for tax cuts.

cheers, mdh


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## I_am_John_Galt (31 Mar 2005)

Cdn Blackshirt said:
			
		

> Tax Cut and their true Stimulatory Effect
> Current economic models (and economists) are absolutely foolhardy in that they ignore the impact of free access to a domestic market.  Quite simply tax cuts are only highly stimulatory and create jobs in a closed-cycle economy.


Wrong.



> If on the other hand tax cuts are provided that are then spent by consumers on imported goods (let's say Chinese goods), you have instead just taken money out of federal coffers and created a great stimulus in the nation supplying those imports.


By allowing consumers to spend on foreign goods you are increasing wealth both directly and by increasing the velocity of the money supply: money in "federal coffers" does neither (= economic stagnation).



> Tax Cuts and who gets them
> There is a traditional economic belief that whoever gets those tax cuts is moot and it is simply a dollar issue.  That is in fact totally false.  As someone with disposable income I am far more likely to save my funds and reinvest in equity (some domestic/some foreign) that someone closer to the poverty line who will immediately dump those newfound funds back into the economy to the benefit of everyone.


If you'd studied National Income Accounting (and I presume you have) you'd know that _Investment_ is part of the basic output identity: the only 'drain' on the system is REAL savings (i.e., stuffing bills into mattresses).



> The Minimum Wage
> Like tax cuts for low income earners, any boost to the minimum wage is immediately recycled back into the economy as those funds are immediately spent.  In essence, a raise in the minimum wage not only creates a better standard of living for those earning the minimum wage, but also for all the businesses who sell to those minimum wage earners, and their shareholders.   You have the added benefit as previously mentioned which is as working becomes more attractive than collecting EI, more individuals will choose to work, lowering the demand for EI, and lowering EI premiums for the rest of us.


Raising the minimum wage means that it is more expensive to get a given unit of work completed.  This invariably means that the firm is less competitive relative to firms with lower labour costs (i.e., foreign competiton).  Less competitive = less output = less demand for labour = less jobs.  In the closed economy you have merely created nominal inflation (i.e., prices will increase with wages and wealth will remain inchanged).



> Lastly, as you bring people from subsistence to have at least some disposable income, I would argue you greatly reduce the likelihood that family will resort to criminal activity out of desperation (which again due to policing and court costs is another indirect method of reducing taxation on the general public).


Business owners aren't stupid: they will not employ more people simply because the minimum wage has increased.  Actually, you will only have two possible outcomes: less employment (open economy), or inflation to the point where real incomes remain unchanged (closed economy): I fail to see how either would result in a reduction in crime.



> What does effect domestic labour demand is foreign nations with different labour standards who intentionally deflate their currency in order to create a competitive imbalance and corporate entities with no loyalty to either their home nation or their workers as they scour the world in pursuit of higher profits (and the resulting stock option gains).


Or maybe they have a greater domestic supply of labour and local wages, while much lower than western standards, pay better than workin' the fields.



> Bottom Line:   If you want to see your tenets of traditional economics at work, have a look at the US economy, and before you point to the most recent number indicating US GDP growth at 3.8%, try calculating that GDP in a bundle of world currencies since the Bush tax cuts went into effect and you will see the US economy in fact not expanded at all, but instead has dramatically contracted....


What?

Best Regards ....


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (31 Mar 2005)

daniel h. said:
			
		

> Letting Bombardier die would be even worse than subsidizing them.


Why?





> I do think we should get shares or the loans should get repaid, but every country does this.


Which is exactly why we shouldn't subsidize them: our pockets are simply not as deep as other countries ... we will eventually lose the subsidy game: it's just a question of how much money we send down the drain with it.



> The government can do whatever it wants. We have crown corporations in this country that employ over 2.5 million people. Bombardier used to be a bunch of different crown (public) corporations. So was Hawker Siddeley (now BAE systems) in Britain.


What is your point?



> The government can also indirectly stimulate jobs by changing economic priorities from low inflation for the rich to job creation. It's almost as if the 1950s and 1960s never happened to some people.


Gimme a break: 'changing economic priorities' is a euphemism for taking money (& jobs) from where they do the most benefit and moving them to where some mandarin wants them (usually for personal electoral and/or monetary benefit).  Check out Bastiat some time: http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html


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## mdh (31 Mar 2005)

> The government can also indirectly stimulate jobs by changing economic priorities from low inflation for the rich to job creation. It's almost as if the 1950s and 1960s never happened to some people.
> Gimme a break: 'changing economic priorities' is a euphamism for taking money (& jobs) from where they do the most benefit and moving them to where some mandarin wants them (usually for personal electoral and/or monetary benefit).



I will second JG on this.   Low inflation has not been a policy designed to support the rich - it has had the opposite effect - enabling thousands to enter the housing market (thereby purchasing an important asset) because interest rates (real interest rates) have been low.   Inflation, especially stagflation in late 1970s, was a sustained attack on the Canadian prosperity.   We had to break it through double digit IR and tight monetary policy. (Any one here remember Trudeau's "world of 6 and 5"?)

But Big Government lovers shouldn't worry too much. The next attempt to "change economic priorities" by the federal Liberals is already happening - mainly through the implementation of the Kyoto Accord - possibly one of the greatest instruments of economic intervention ever concocted by Ottawa mandarins.

cheers, mdh


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## daniel h. (31 Mar 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> Why?Which is exactly why we shouldn't subsidize them: our pockets are simply not as deep as other countries ... we will eventually lose the subsidy game: it's just a question of how much money we send down the drain with it.
> What is your point?
> Gimme a break: 'changing economic priorities' is a euphemism for taking money (& jobs) from where they do the most benefit and moving them to where some mandarin wants them (usually for personal electoral and/or monetary benefit).   Check out Bastiat some time: http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html




My turn to ask some questions.
  
1. Do you consider constituents (voters) to be a special-interest group? If, for example, the Liberals created 10,000 Bombardier jobs and win an election, is that vote buying or is that voters rewarding a party for doing what is in their constituents best interest?

2. Is it possible that I simply disagree with your priorities? Do you believe in democracy? The right to disagree with those who believe there only one way to do things?


Do you believe that Japan made a mistake by protecting their auto industry, or is having the world's 2nd biggest economy proof that protectionism works? 8)


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## daniel h. (31 Mar 2005)

Infanteer said:
			
		

> Uhh...when you consider that the three cornerstones of the post World War II global economy (of which the US is the hegemonic power) are GATT (which evolved into the WTO), the World Bank, and the IMF, I can't see how the heck you figure protectionism was responsible for making the US a world superpower.
> 
> IPE 101 my friend....
> 
> Probably an embarrassment because they base their entire notion of nationalism off the premise that the United States poses a clear and present danger to the existence of Canada.   I don't like to foist "Chicken Little" up as a national hero, despite their achievements....




The U.S. is very protectionist. They import to other countries, but are extremely protectionist when it comes to imports. There is not one U.S. indsutry that is more than 50% foreign-owned. In Canada, more than 30 industries are majority foreign-owned.

It is illegal for U.S. shipping companies to buy ships built in foreign countries. More protectionism.

The U.S. taxes our softwood lumber 27%, beef, bison, mutton, etc., and still people say they aren't protectionist.



As for Mel Hurtig and Carolyn Parrish, you are absolutely right they fear the U.S....why don't you? They simply have too much capital for us to play by their rules. They'll simply buy us out.

The majority have supported Hurtig's BMD stance and Parrish's stance on the Iraq War in polls. The will of the majority used to be seen as a positive thing. Democracy.


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## daniel h. (31 Mar 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> Job creation eh?
> 
> See point "b", and ask yourself how many jobs have been created by the billion dollar boondoggle, sending $100,000,000 to "Liberal friendly" advertising agencies, permanent welfare traps in the seasonal industries or all the corporate welfare the various levels of government blow off every year.
> 
> ...




Poverty lines do change, and the U.S. has the highest percentage of their population of any country in prison.


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## TCBF (31 Mar 2005)

" and the U.S. has the highest percentage of their population of any country in prison."

That's because:

1.  They don't execute as many as they should.
2.  There police are better funded and solve more crimes than police elsewhere.  We are closing down RCMP labs - and our crime experts are bailing to the states - and they are expanding their crime labs.
3.  Longer sentences in the USA keep scum behind bars longer - hence, a larger prison population.

Tom


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## mdh (31 Mar 2005)

> My turn to ask some questions.
> 
> 1. Do you consider constituents (voters) to be a special-interest group? If, for example, the Liberals created 10,000 Bombardier jobs and win an election, is that vote buying or is that voters rewarding a party for doing what is in their constituents best interest?



I don't think voters are a special interest group, but I would consider Bombardier a special interest. And while it's true that industries like Bombardier have enormous political and economic clout - that doesn't mean that what's good for Bombardier is good for Canada.   

Why should 10,000 Bombardier workers enjoy the privilege of government subsidization when other private sector workers do not? We have merely created two classes of workers. Bombardier may have better lobbyists than the average Canadian voter - but that's not really an economic question - it's a political one.

And at what point do we say to Bombardier that enough is enough - now you must compete on your own merits?   In the meantime we run the risk of subsidizing corporate welfare and perpetuating inefficiencies and special pleading. Governments need to make sound decisions for all Canadians not select groups.

(However you raise a good point about the power of political interference in making economic policy - elected officials are alway vulnerable to that kind of pressure.)   




> 2. Is it possible that I simply disagree with your priorities? Do you believe in democracy? The right to disagree with those who believe there only one way to do things?



Disagreement is what this forum is all about - and so is the ensuing debate. No?   



> Do you believe that Japan made a mistake by protecting their auto industry, or is having the world's 2nd biggest economy proof that protectionism works?



Japan has suffered through more than a decade of recession, enemic growth, financial mismanagement, and creaking industries (the auto sector being one of them).   China, its great nemesis, has simultaneously established itself as a major manufacturing power by stepping into the void.   So yes Japan has made a grievous error in protecting its industries, and it will continue to pay a price for its protectionist policies. 

(As a side note, the great Japanese economic model that had the Michael Crichton camp (and inspiring a mini-industry of "how to" management books to create the North American Happy Worker) so worried in the 1980s evaporated like the mirage it was when the country's speculative bubble burst in 1988.   I haven't seen any paranoid movies heralding the harmonious genius of the Japanese work force in a quite a while.)

cheers, mdh


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## Edward Campbell (31 Mar 2005)

The _will of the majority_ is always 'right' in a democracy, daniel h. â â€œ not necessarily *smart*, just 'right.'  The majority, in Canada, it seems to me, is bent on re-titling Arthur Lower's great book and having us go _â ?From Colony to Nation and Back to Colony_â ? â â€œ which is exactly what will happen if idiots (not too strong a word) and intellectual pretenders like Hurtig and Parrish have their way.  They want to perpetuate Trudeau's _cult of entitlement_ which is, sure as the gods made little green apples, dragging us into economic, social and political oblivion.

Hurtig and Parrish and their _fellow travelers_ want illusory independence even as they try to deny their countrymen the tools to maintain real, meaningful sovereignty.

Burney is right: Canada has sunk to the status of _dilettante_ amongst nations.  Trudeau did that to us and Hurtig and Parrish and the _useful idiots_ who follow them are trying to keep us there or push us deeper into irrelevancy, until we don't exist as a real, sovereign, nation-state at all â â€œ just as an American colony, sort of like a snow bound Puerto Rico.

</rant>


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## I_am_John_Galt (31 Mar 2005)

Well said, mdh!


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## I_am_John_Galt (31 Mar 2005)

Edward Campbell said:
			
		

> The _will of the majority_ is always 'right' in a democracy, daniel h. â â€œ not necessarily *smart*, just 'right.'  The majority, in Canada



Sadly, I suggest that in Canada it more a case of the_ largest minority_ always being 'right'.


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## Brad Sallows (31 Mar 2005)

>The will of the majority used to be seen as a positive thing. Democracy.

Unless the majority wants the death penalty, or doesn't want same sex marriage, or any one of a thousand other things.  Somewhere there must be a book of rules: "When the Majority Counts".  I haven't found it yet.


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## daniel h. (31 Mar 2005)

Edward Campbell said:
			
		

> The _will of the majority_ is always 'right' in a democracy, daniel h. â â€œ not necessarily *smart*, just 'right.'   The majority, in Canada, it seems to me, is bent on re-titling Arthur Lower's great book and having us go _â ?From Colony to Nation and Back to Colony_â ? â â€œ which is exactly what will happen if idiots (not too strong a word) and intellectual pretenders like Hurtig and Parrish have their way.   They want to perpetuate Trudeau's _cult of entitlement_ which is, sure as the gods made little green apples, dragging us into economic, social and political oblivion.
> 
> Hurtig and Parrish and their _fellow travelers_ want illusory independence even as they try to deny their countrymen the tools to maintain real, meaningful sovereignty.
> 
> ...




Don't get me wrong, I don't think democracy always works, but Canadian sovereignty is not the same as everyone voting for public execution.


How will Hurtig push us into political irrelevancy? He pushed Trudeau to develop the FIRA, and our access to the U.S. market was actually greater then then it is now with all the tariffs against us.

39 U.S. states list us as their top export market, and we import more U.S. manufactured goods than Europe and Japan combined. We take their products and we have the resources, so I think we're actually more capable of independence than people think.

Our governments are crying poor even though our production is much more efficient than in the past. If we can't afford anything, perhaps new policies are necessary.

When a superpower bullies you trade-wise, the only way to get the bully to back off is punch him in the nose. Hurtig has illustrated how countervailing oil and gas duties would cause U.S. congress to end our lumber duties in a second, because the U.S. needs the oil and can't afford to retaliate, as we also could block their goods as well.,


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## Brad Sallows (31 Mar 2005)

Where but the US would you propose we ship our oil and gas if the US simply bites the bullet and pays higher prices to obtain imports from elsewhere?  In case you haven't looked, Canadian ports are not well-equipped to ship those commodities abroad.  If you want to shoot yourself in your economic foot, just quit your job and move out onto the streets; don't try to drag the rest of us with you.


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## daniel h. (31 Mar 2005)

TCBF said:
			
		

> " and the U.S. has the highest percentage of their population of any country in prison."
> 
> That's because:
> 
> ...




You have the right to your own opinion.  I simply find the idea of a private prison a bit creepy.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (31 Mar 2005)

They are not all private, and we have a large one right here in Ontario and lots of youth places.[in fact, most]


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## Brad Sallows (31 Mar 2005)

>Do you believe that Japan made a mistake by protecting their auto industry, or is having the world's 2nd biggest economy proof that protectionism works?

Japan proved that protectionism can work if your major export destination is sufficiently magnanimous to not retaliate in kind.


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## daniel h. (31 Mar 2005)

mdh said:
			
		

> I don't think voters are a special interest group, but I would consider Bombardier a special interest. And while it's true that industries like Bombardier have enormous political and economic clout - that doesn't mean that what's good for Bombardier is good for Canada.
> 
> Why should 10,000 Bombardier workers enjoy the privilege of government subsidization when other private sector workers do not? We have merely created two classes of workers. Bombardier may have better lobbyists than the average Canadian voter - but that's not really an economic question - it's a political one.
> 
> ...




I want you to know that I do agree that Bombardier is a spoiled child. 

Personally, here's what I would do with Bombardier: 1 - possibly make it public again like Canadair was formerly, and Hawker Siddeley was for a while in Britain beofre it become BAE Systems, OR,

2- make Bombardier pay loans back like Canada did with Daimler Chrysler, or 3 - force Bombardier to give the public shares when we give handouts so we get some benefit when the company bounces back.


Regarding Japan, I realize they have problems like political malaise (liberal party in power for over 40 years) and one thing people don't talk enough about--low birth rates. Way to low.


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## daniel h. (31 Mar 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Where but the US would you propose we ship our oil and gas if the US simply bites the bullet and pays higher prices to obtain imports from elsewhere?   In case you haven't looked, Canadian ports are not well-equipped to ship those commodities abroad.   If you want to shoot yourself in your economic foot, just quit your job and move out onto the streets; don't try to drag the rest of us with you.




We are the biggest U.S. supplier and we they couldn't afford to go elsewhere. Right now we are sending huge amounts of oil to the U.S., getting few taxes, and no royalties. We're not getting much wealth at all, so we might as well send it east-west in Canada, and save the excess supply for a rainy day when we actually need it. We don't need the money and with foreign ownership most of the wealth leaves the country anyway.


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## Brad Sallows (31 Mar 2005)

> If, for example, the Liberals created 10,000 Bombardier jobs and win an election

Then I will only wonder if the same money, left in the hands of companies capable of competing without subsidies, might have created 12,000 approximately equivalent jobs.  Where do you think the money comes from?  Subsidization is always a zero-sum game - you take money from productive, healthy companies and individuals and give it to unproductive, unhealthy companies.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (31 Mar 2005)

Quote,
We don't need the money  .............WHAT??


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## Brad Sallows (31 Mar 2005)

We have 10% (approximately) of the population of the US, and even if we use slightly more per capita, where do you propose to store the excess, genius?


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## Brad Sallows (31 Mar 2005)

>any boost to the minimum wage is immediately recycled back into the economy as those funds are immediately spent

So what?  Suppose I have $40 and I have 8 hours of yard work to be done.  I can find someone to do it for $5 per hour, but minimum wage laws require $8.
1) I can hire someone for 5 hours and do the remaining 3 myself, thereby losing 3 hours of my time.  Neither more nor less money is recycled.
2) If I can scrape together $64, I can hire someone for 8 hours, thereby losing $24 worth of productivity.
3) If I don't need the work done immediately, I can do it myself in dribs and drabs and use the $40 to get $40 worth of goods and services.  Neither more nor less money is recycled and I get different utility from my $40, but the potential employee remains unemployed.

>a raise in the minimum wage not only creates a better standard of living for those earning the minimum wage

Assuming they don't lose hours, or entire jobs, or the employer doesn't cut corners in other ways which degrade the interests of the employees (eg. benefits, health and safety issues), or the new cost of wages doesn't bring automation within range of making sense, then yes.  Meanwhile, people - low income people - who were earning at or slightly above the new minimum wage see their incomes unchanged, but will get to participate in the price inflation which accompanies the wage inflation.  Your benefit to the poor, is paid for in part by other poor.  How nice.  Those who have no skills or abilities worth anything close to the new minimum wage become more or less permanently unemployed.  I imagine the free time and sense of being beyond value gives them such a boost to their self-esteem that they cease to be one of those social ills that social policies such as minimum wage laws are intended to remove.

The idea that minimum wages should approach a "living wage" relies on the assumption that large numbers of minimum wage earners remain in those circumstances all their working lives.  That isn't what the data show.  We can be certain that to abolish minimum wages would immediately cause some increase in productivity, and an increase in employment.  Whatever is available as welfare and EI will continue to operate as a de facto minimum wage.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (31 Mar 2005)

Quote,
_Your benefit to the poor, is paid for in part by other poor.  How nice.  Those who have no skills or abilities worth anything close to the new minimum wage become more or less permanently unemployed.  I imagine the free time and sense of being beyond value gives them such a boost to their self-esteem that they cease to be one of those social ills that social policies such as minimum wage laws are intended to remove._

Thanks, Brad. I've never even thought of it that way, but I could see it. If I'm an employer and i have to pay out more money for basic labour than I will be searching for experience, and isn't that the problem we are hearing about in the workforce today,.. lack of experience?
Hmmmm.....


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## mainerjohnthomas (1 Apr 2005)

S_Baker said:
			
		

> his responses aren't even logical, or for that matter well though out.   Canada benefits from free trade with the US plain and simple.   as for other markets, I say sell to whom you can, China, India, to whom ever.


     Quick Geography lesson, we are in North America, our transportation network, road, rail, and river links us to just one other country, our largest trading parner, the largest economy in all of the Americas (North, Central and South).  Europe has united into the EU to recognize and exploit the high level of their own economic integration, to allow them to out compete us.  We formed NAFTA because it was the best way to make North America competative against the EU, and the rise of the Asia.  Our choices are roughly these; recognize that Canada, the US and Mexico form a single economic entity that will succeed or fail together, or, pretend that our economies have nothing to do with each other, and just wonder why ours sneezes everytime theirs (US) gets a cold.  In the first option, we are helping to direct and enhance our joint economic growth, in the other we are simply silent (and less effective) partners in the same struggle, with no knowledge or control over our economic destiny.
     Canada and the US jointly defend our shores, our economies jointly exploit our resources and skills, we are two seperate nations, but we have grown so interconnected for so long, that for either of us to pretend otherwise impossible.  Free Trade makes North America more competative in the world.  Protectionism allows Canadian and US special interest groups to score points off each other, while losing to the rest of the world.  We will succeed or fail together, and our leaders have to recognize this.  If our leaders would recgonize the corallary to this, and rebuild Canada's defence and foreign service to the point where we were internationally relavent again, we would resume our place as a partner, rather than de facto protecterate of the US.


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## canadianblue (1 Apr 2005)

> " and the U.S. has the highest percentage of their population of any country in prison."
> 
> That's because:
> 
> ...



Agreed, which is worse keeping dangerous criminals behind bars, or allowing them out on the streets to commit more crimes. Liberals would prefer that dangerous criminals be let out early.


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## daniel h. (1 Apr 2005)

Futuretrooper said:
			
		

> Agreed, which is worse keeping dangerous criminals behind bars, or allowing them out on the streets to commit more crimes. Liberals would prefer that dangerous criminals be let out early.




I don't really like any party, but I think some would argue they are in jail because a large number are poor, disadvantaged. Little opportunity. That's no excuse but you have to give people something to live for.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (1 Apr 2005)

Quote,
but I think some would argue they are in jail because a large number are poor, disadvantaged.

...and "some" would be so wrong it is friggin' unbelievable and this I can say without hesitation.


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## daniel h. (1 Apr 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> > If, for example, the Liberals created 10,000 Bombardier jobs and win an election
> 
> Then I will only wonder if the same money, left in the hands of companies capable of competing without subsidies, might have created 12,000 approximately equivalent jobs.   Where do you think the money comes from?   Subsidization is always a zero-sum game - you take money from productive, healthy companies and individuals and give it to unproductive, unhealthy companies.




But think about it. Bombardier is labelled "unhealthy", yet they are the *world leader* in regional jets and trains. They bring Canada immense prestige and are a great talent base. How can one of the leading aerospace companies be unhealthy? I think this proves that the market is too unstable when it comes to large, expensive products that most people don't buy. This is why I think it should go public again, or at least give us shares.

It's like trying to make money on airlines. Rich people keep trying to make money on airlines, and will forever fail because airlines are simply a horrible business plan. Air Canada WAS public and was best in the world, privatized and almost bankrupt, higher costs, less serivice.....


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## daniel h. (1 Apr 2005)

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Quote,
> We don't need the money   .............WHAT??




We're not poor like Venezuela. We don't need to sell our oil off quickly. We have enough wealth, it simply isn't equitably shared.

Anyway, people who insult my ideas are silly because oil will get MORE valuable as it gets scarcer, so why not wait until it is worth more? AHHHH. ;D


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## daniel h. (1 Apr 2005)

mainerjohnthomas said:
			
		

> Quick Geography lesson, we are in North America, our transportation network, road, rail, and river links us to just one other country, our largest trading parner, the largest economy in all of the Americas (North, Central and South).   Europe has united into the EU to recognize and exploit the high level of their own economic integration, to allow them to out compete us.   We formed NAFTA because it was the best way to make North America competative against the EU, and the rise of the Asia.   Our choices are roughly these; recognize that Canada, the US and Mexico form a single economic entity that will succeed or fail together, or, pretend that our economies have nothing to do with each other, and just wonder why ours sneezes everytime theirs (US) gets a cold.   In the first option, we are helping to direct and enhance our joint economic growth, in the other we are simply silent (and less effective) partners in the same struggle, with no knowledge or control over our economic destiny.
> Canada and the US jointly defend our shores, our economies jointly exploit our resources and skills, we are two seperate nations, but we have grown so interconnected for so long, that for either of us to pretend otherwise impossible.   Free Trade makes North America more competative in the world.   Protectionism allows Canadian and US special interest groups to score points off each other, while losing to the rest of the world.   We will succeed or fail together, and our leaders have to recognize this.   If our leaders would recgonize the corallary to this, and rebuild Canada's defence and foreign service to the point where we were internationally relavent again, we would resume our place as a partner, rather than de facto protecterate of the US.





Why on earth would a country like Canada tie its future to a declining superpower? We have the resources, they don't. 

We have ample evidence that the U.S. breaks the agreements it signs--such as NAFTA. They are protectionist, against OUR goods while taking our oil.

The two countries that have stayed out of the E.U. have done the best: Norway and Switzerland. Norway is ranked the best country in the world in which to live, and they have oil like us.

If Norway can do it with 5 million people, we can easily do it with 30 million and many more resources.


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## Brad Sallows (1 Apr 2005)

Either Bombardier is healthy and can continue to be among the world leaders in regional jets and trains without subsidies, or it is fatally wounded and enjoys that leadership advantage precisely because some of my earnings are confiscated every year to pay the CEOs and employees of Bombardier and, also, to pay for part of the cost of the jets and trains purchased here and abroad.  That I am fractionally in servitude to businessmen and engineers in another province sticks in my craw enough, but I am damned if I understand why paying part of the cost of jets for foreign companies is a duty implied by my Canadian citizenship.

Prestige?  You think the role of government is to ensure we all have enough prestige?  I have no words strong enough to express my sentiments in that regard.  I imagine the lives of a few soldiers every few years in crappy little trouble spots is also a small price to pay for our senior politicians and self-obsessed Canadians to preen and strut about imagining we have prestige.

Canada does not care about its talent base sufficiently to justify subsidizing a selected few.  If Canada cared about its talent base, Canadian voters would elect Canadian politicians who would find a way to keep talented doctors and scientists and engineers and entertainers from fleeing to the US.  Actions belie intentions.  Have the moral courage to call it what it is: pandering to voters in Quebec by using the property of voters in other parts of Canada.  Legal it may be; morally, some might call it theft.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (1 Apr 2005)

Quote,
 Norway is ranked the best country in the world in which to live, and they have oil like us.

...and, once again, have you been there? I have[twice] , please tell me what I missed over there to make it the "best" place to live, oh guru?


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## Brad Sallows (1 Apr 2005)

>We have enough wealth, it simply isn't equitably shared.

Do you understand how wealth is created?  Put simply, "time is money"; or rather, money is a semi-universal medium for the exchange of time.  People convert their time - by working - into goods and services which have utility to others, and can be traded.  Find a way to produce more or novel goods and services in less time, and you increase wealth.  This is why wealth creation is not a zero-sum game; there is effectively a near-infinite pool of wealth subject to human imagination and endeavour.  What you call "sharing" wealth is merely the transfer of one person's productive time to another.  Life is short, but it falls to some of us to be forced to give part of our time to others so that they have all of their time and some of ours.  Some people imagine that to be "fair", and some imagine themselves to be compassionate in dictating who shall give and who shall receive.

>why not wait until it is worth more

Wait long enough and the market will collapse.  Have you been hanging onto the mineral rights to a coal deposit waiting for the price to increase as the demand for coal to power steam engines shoots through the roof?


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## Infanteer (1 Apr 2005)

Daniel - you're foaming at the mouth.

Why are you here?


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## daniel h. (1 Apr 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Either Bombardier is healthy and can continue to be among the world leaders in regional jets and trains without subsidies, or it is fatally wounded and enjoys that leadership advantage precisely because some of my earnings are confiscated every year to pay the CEOs and employees of Bombardier and, also, to pay for part of the cost of the jets and trains purchased here and abroad.   That I am fractionally in servitude to businessmen and engineers in another province sticks in my craw enough, but I am damned if I understand why paying part of the cost of jets for foreign companies is a duty implied by my Canadian citizenship.
> 
> Prestige?   You think the role of government is to ensure we all have enough prestige?   I have no words strong enough to express my sentiments in that regard.   I imagine the lives of a few soldiers every few years in crappy little trouble spots is also a small price to pay for our senior politicians and self-obsessed Canadians to preen and strut about imagining we have prestige.
> 
> Canada does not care about its talent base sufficiently to justify subsidizing a selected few.   If Canada cared about its talent base, Canadian voters would elect Canadian politicians who would find a way to keep talented doctors and scientists and engineers and entertainers from fleeing to the US.   Actions belie intentions.   Have the moral courage to call it what it is: pandering to voters in Quebec by using the property of voters in other parts of Canada.   Legal it may be; morally, some might call it theft.




Bombardier has factories in Toronto and Thunder Bay as well. I can't stand ideology. The idea they are simply buying votes is funny, because most people in Quebec have other things on their mind. That's cynicism, not reality. There are many reasons for doing what they do.


Part of a government's job is to ensure we have prestige, yes. We are a G-8 country. If you were running Canada we wouldn't clean the windows to save money. :


----------



## daniel h. (1 Apr 2005)

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Quote,
> Norway is ranked the best country in the world in which to live, and they have oil like us.
> 
> ...and, once again, have you been there? I have[twice] , please tell me what I missed over there to make it the "best" place to live, oh guru?




I didn't say you would like it. I said they are ranked the best country in the world to live in--as Canada used to be. It is subjective but they do provide a large number of services using their oil wealth. Better than Ralph Klein cutting welfare and hospitals in the middle of an oil boom.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse (1 Apr 2005)

Let me get this straight, we should keep our oil and not sell it to the US because we should be more like Norway and ...wait here is a quote I just found "since Norway exports 90 per cent of its entire oil production."
http://www.explorenorth.com/library/weekly/aa091500a.htm

But we should be like them? no we should be ..no, wait here's what I meant...

Will you at least try and stick to ONE arguement?


----------



## TCBF (1 Apr 2005)

Actually, Daniel, the four countries most other people wan't to emigrate to are the USA, Canada, Norway, and Switzerland, in no particular order.   Those four countries also have the worlds highest rates of the private possession of firearms, though I won't go into that here.

Tom


----------



## larry Strong (1 Apr 2005)

Futuretrooper said:
			
		

> Agreed, which is worse keeping dangerous criminals behind bars, or allowing them out on the streets to commit more crimes. Liberals would prefer that dangerous criminals be let out early.



A "True" Liberal doesn't think any prisoner is dangerous. It's not his/her fault, it's all societies fault that they are in there.


----------



## JBP (1 Apr 2005)

> Agreed, which is worse keeping dangerous criminals behind bars, or allowing them out on the streets to commit more crimes. Liberals would prefer that dangerous criminals be let out early.
> 
> A "True" Liberal doesn't think any prisoner is dangerous. It's not his/her fault, it's all societies fault that they are in there.



YEAH, and look how good that philosophy has worked.... 

Load of crap if you ask me, society plays at best, 30% of thier decisioning to do something illegal/immoral, the rest is them being loosers.

I know, I've been there, my family was heavily involved in crime and I could have jumped in any point I wanted to. I've never done drugs, drank alcohol or smoked ANYTHING ever in my entire life and never committed a crime because my family and others like them so thoroughly disgusted me. 

It's b*llshit to blame it all on society, I may have swallowed that load when I was a young pessimistic teenager. That's like how psychologists always say, "Oh, he brutally raped and ripped apart that girl because he was severely abused as a child, IT'S NOT HIS FAULT!"...  :

Yeah, that may have had a big part of it, but I suppose the world is flat too eh?


----------



## Kat Stevens (1 Apr 2005)

Blaming society, or Daddy, or God himself is pure unadulterated, undiluted crap IMHO.  Everyone makes choices every day. You CHOOSE not to be an assh*le today, you won't be an assh*le today. Pretty cut and dried in my book.  I'd love to know when blaming everyone else for your behavior stops, and a little old fashioned accountability begins.  Again, just MHO.

CHIMO,  Kat


----------



## Edward Campbell (1 Apr 2005)

daniel h. said:
			
		

> But think about it. Bombardier is labelled "unhealthy", yet they are the *world leader* in regional jets and trains. They bring Canada immense prestige and are a great talent base. How can one of the leading aerospace companies be unhealthy? I think this proves that the market is too unstable when it comes to large, expensive products that most people don't buy. This is why I think it should go public again, or at least give us shares.
> 
> It's like trying to make money on airlines. Rich people keep trying to make money on airlines, and will forever fail because airlines are simply a horrible business plan. Air Canada WAS public and was best in the world, privatized and almost bankrupt, higher costs, less serivice.....



This, along with jobs, Jobs *JOBS!* is the classic argument for subsidies or, worse, state-owned industries.

We operate, or try to operate a global system of _regulated capitalism_.  Unfortunately it is an essentially _voluntary_ system which means that the race to the _statist_ bottom is always (politically) easier than trying to compete in a real _free market_ such as Brad Sallows describes.  It is a sad but true *fact* that Brazil, Europe and the United States all provide huge subsidies to their aerospace firms â â€œ to not provide subsidies and export supports to _Bombardier_ is, knowingly, to condemn them to failure and their employees (voters in Québec!) to the bread-line.

(We used to have a quite legal, proper, challenge-proof â â€œ sanctioned by the GATT/WTO â â€œ subsidy and support programme; it was called the Defence Industries Productivity Programme (DIPP).  We could pour as much money as wanted into Bombardier and White Star and CDC and GMDD and, and, and ... all legal and above board so long as we said we were supporting our defence industrial base to protect our own national security.  All international trade law must ignore national defence/security.  The biggest idiot to ever be Canada's foreign minister, _Pink Lloyd_ Axworthy  (dumber, by far, than Howard Green (1959/63), convinced Chrétien to cancel the programme, over the screaming objections of almost all of the bureaucracy, because he didn't like the _optics_ of the name.)

We are a long, long way from a global or even a regional _free market_ and so wasteful subsidies, which encourage lower productivity and corruption, are, like the poor, _always with us_; that doesn't make them useful, just inevitable.

By the way, I understand that _Bombardier_ will ensure that they can produce glossy brochures and slick videos showing military versions (AWACS and Medium range Maritime Patrol) of the C series jet so that the government can give them hundreds and hundreds of millions â â€œ maybe a billion plus, in (perfectly legal) R&D contracts.


----------



## larry Strong (1 Apr 2005)

Kat Stevens said:
			
		

> Blaming society, or Daddy, or God himself is pure unadulterated, undiluted crap IMHO.   Everyone makes choices every day. You CHOOSE not to be an assh*le today, you won't be an assh*le today. Pretty cut and dried in my book.   I'd love to know when blaming everyone else for your behavior stops, and a little old fashioned accountability begins.   Again, just MHO.
> 
> CHIMO,   Kat



I think that will start when the general population starts seeing our "Leaders", and I use that word with great trepidation, begin to take respresponsibilities for *"Their"* actions.


----------



## a_majoor (1 Apr 2005)

Capitalism and democracy have other benifits besides high standards of living, they are good for trees and mountain lions as well!



> *It's the End of the World as We Know It...*
> ...and, yes, I feel fine. As does the U.S.
> 
> It's the end of the world, and I feel fine
> ...



and a bit of advice as to how to slip in some ownership even in a "Big Government" environment



> What's the thinking behind the Ownership Society?
> 
> The Ryan Sager article mentioned by Glen Reynolds today is a type of attack that's really starting to bug me.
> 
> ...


----------



## BDG.CalgHighrs (1 Apr 2005)

TCBF said:
			
		

> Actually, Daniel, the four countries most other people wan't to emigrate to are the USA, Canada, Norway, and Switzerland, in no particular order.   Those four countries also have the worlds highest rates of the private possession of firearms, though I won't go into that here.
> 
> Tom



While this might be where people actulay want to go, last I checked (this could be out of date) actual Imigration stacks up like this:

Total foreign pop inflow,

Germany 
Japan
UK
Italy
France

Asylum seekers:

UK 92k per anum. Accpeted: 43%
US 88                                 43%
Germany 86                         9.9%
France 47                             20%
Canada 42                             61%


----------



## Edward Campbell (2 Apr 2005)

PPCLI Guy said:
			
		

> As I understand it, she is literally doing the writing, as opposed to doing the stimate and coming up with the plan.



Not any more, it appears.

This is from this morning's _National Post_ at: http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2cdf17f1-2b38-46ee-89b5-ab2504625b99



> PMO lets global policy author go
> Controversial choice
> 
> Mike Blanchfield
> ...



I love this line from a 'senior official': _"When the IPS is ready, it will be released. When it's released, it will be ready."_


----------



## daniel h. (2 Apr 2005)

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Quote,
> Norway is ranked the best country in the world in which to live, and they have oil like us.
> 
> ...and, once again, have you been there? I have[twice] , please tell me what I missed over there to make it the "best" place to live, oh guru?




If you don't live there, maybe you didn't miss anything. However, I think things like literacy and social well-being can go hand-in-hand with economics and military issues. 

Norway uses its oil revenue to give Norwegians the best service and programs in the world. Canada has much more wealth than Norway and we allow it to be foreign-owned and the revenue we do get is thrown away in the form of corporate tax cuts and debt repayments.


----------



## daniel h. (2 Apr 2005)

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Let me get this straight, we should keep our oil and not sell it to the US because we should be more like Norway and ...wait here is a quote I just found "since Norway exports 90 per cent of its entire oil production."
> http://www.explorenorth.com/library/weekly/aa091500a.htm
> 
> But we should be like them? no we should be ..no, wait here's what I meant...
> ...





yeah sorry. I think we can export some, but we should make sure we are getting more of the wealth than we are currently getting. Why should Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell make a fortune off Canada?

We can export oil but we must ensure that we aren't forced to keep exporting oil and gas in a shortage. Norway has no NAFTA obligating them to keep trading. Neither does Mexico, because they have an exemption.


----------



## daniel h. (2 Apr 2005)

Edward Campbell said:
			
		

> This, along with jobs, Jobs *JOBS!* is the classic argument for subsidies or, worse, state-owned industries.
> 
> We operate, or try to operate a global system of _regulated capitalism_.   Unfortunately it is an essentially _voluntary_ system which means that the race to the _statist_ bottom is always (politically) easier than trying to compete in a real _free market_ such as Brad Sallows describes.   It is a sad but true *fact* that Brazil, Europe and the United States all provide huge subsidies to their aerospace firms â â€œ to not provide subsidies and export supports to _Bombardier_ is, knowingly, to condemn them to failure and their employees (voters in Québec!) to the bread-line.
> 
> ...





Great posts on here. I hear you. I realize globalization is what is being promoted, is just can't see how it can work when some countries are so much more powerful than others.


----------



## Zipper (2 Apr 2005)

Just a note on Majoor's environmental article.

All of those "improvements" to the environment that are claimed in that article would have taken place over many years.

In other words. Its not Bush's policies that did it. Nor can you say it was even Clinton's.

Environmental damage is very quick. A few days even depending on size of impact. Recovery on the the other hand takes years if not generations.

So who can you thank for these things? Your going to have to go back to Regan and well before to find policies that may have changed those degradations. Not to mention the citizens of those areas who either fought for, or took responsibility for those areas that are now in "recovery".


----------



## mdh (2 Apr 2005)

> So who can you thank for these things? Your going to have to go back to Regan and well before to find policies that may have changed those degradations.



As Reagan said there are more trees now than in the time of Columbus.


----------



## a_majoor (2 Apr 2005)

Styen should get in another word here:



> *We need professional help*
> 
> 
> Monday, 4 April 2005
> ...


----------



## tomahawk6 (3 Apr 2005)

The reason oil prices are moving upwards is because the easy to market oil is being used up and we will be going after the oil in places like Alaska, the oil shale/tar sands and others. The higher price of oil will make this more expensive oil worthwhile to bring to market. Years ago in Colorado there was a boom in oil shale leasing. Colorado has enough oil shale to make the US self sufficient for many decades [2 trillion barrels of reserves]. The problem at the time was the cost per barrel was $20 and it just wasnt economical. Now with $50-60 oil that $20 cost per barrel is now economical. We could never have developed Alaska's oil unless oil prices made it feasible.
If oil hits $75 - 100 a barrel then alternative ebergy sources now become cost effective.


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## daniel h. (3 Apr 2005)

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The reason oil prices are moving upwards is because the easy to market oil is being used up and we will be going after the oil in places like Alaska, the oil shale/tar sands and others. The higher price of oil will make this more expensive oil worthwhile to bring to market. Years ago in Colorado there was a boom in oil shale leasing. Colorado has enough oil shale to make the US self sufficient for many decades [2 trillion barrels of reserves]. The problem at the time was the cost per barrel was $20 and it just wasnt economical. Now with $50-60 oil that $20 cost per barrel is now economical. We could never have developed Alaska's oil unless oil prices made it feasible.
> If oil hits $75 - 100 a barrel then alternative ebergy sources now become cost effective.




I had heard that the U.S. only had 5 years domestic supply, and only 1 year in Alaska....maybe that was easy-to-access reserves? Very interesting post, thanks for sharing.

Still would rather Alaska not be developed too much in the arctic, but oh well.


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## a_majoor (3 Apr 2005)

We seem to have sprung a leak from the oil and security thread here.

The question is how to make Canada relevant again. 

Certainly the issue of wealth and economic well being is important, the former USSR had natural resources in abundance and human capital which should have made the world green with envy (Russian mathematicians, chess players and scientists of all types were at or near the forefront of their fields), but due to their socialist political and economic structure, simply squandered their potential, and now Russia is a ghost of the former "Superpower".

Implementing policies which promote the efficient use of economic and human capital has always been the energy source of any expanding power, ancient Greece had a small fraction of the agricultural or manpower resources of the Persian Empire, yet soundly thrashed the Persians in two wars, and was the basis for the Hellenistic destruction of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great. Why? Greece was the home of the first democratic society in history.

Similarly, the Dutch built a globe spanning empire in the 1600s and 1700s, despite a tiny population and resource base, since the Estaat Generale was one of the most liberal and market oriented governments of the era. They defeated autocratic Spain, but were eventually outperformed by the English (oddly enough, AFTER the Restoration), who were also quite liberal, but had a larger resource base to draw from. Sweden had a similar story during the 1600s, with fairly liberal governments and free markets providing the muscle behind their expansion.

Canada has two closely related problems. Problem one is *most Canadians world view encompasses their belly buttons, and nothing else*. Problem two is their navel gazing causes them to see things only insofar as "*how does it benefit me right now*"?, which accounts for the support of organized looting in the form of socialistic "redistribution of wealth", without spending the extra minute to ask "Where did that wealth come from anyway"? (Perhaps the most horrendus recent example is the porovince provided a $13 million dollar grant to the city of London. People and politicians are cheering this as a way to reduce the property tax hike, forgetting that this is $13 million dollars of their own tax money as well.....)

If Canadians actually want to be a force for change in the world, they will have to take a very close look at the world *as it actually is*, and determe just how much blood and treasure needs to be spent in support of the national interest. If the cost is too high, then the definition of the national interest is not well thought out, or we are in a death struggle with a vastly superior opponent (taking on mainland China would be an example).

Liberalizing (in the true sense of the word) our economy and human capital would provide the muscle to carry our these tasks. Free trade provides more wealth than autarky, but if the wealth is just being squandered in Adscam after Adscam, then we could receive trillions of dollars without materially changing our circumstances.


----------



## Zipper (3 Apr 2005)

Well that was some spun story there.

Its amazing how many people and levels of government can be attacked in one article.

Raving? Or journalism? You decide.


----------



## mdh (3 Apr 2005)

> Well that was some spun story there.
> 
> Its amazing how many people and levels of government can be attacked in one article.
> 
> Raving? Or journalism? You decide.



Actually it's an opinion column, not a news story. I prefer to call it "raving journalism" (a term that I suspect Steyn himself wouldn't mind) of the higher kind. But if you have an argument against it, why not share?


----------



## tomahawk6 (3 Apr 2005)

To be relevent Canada needs to spend more money on defense, plain and simple. The Navy needs to go ahead with the CADRE project. They could use more CPF's. This would enable Canadian warships to fully participate in naval operations in support of the war on terror. Another area would be in transport aircraft. I would like to see Canada buy 15-20 C-17's. With C-17's the CF could support airlift requirements. Two tankers are coming on line, but could use 2 more. Supporting the US doesnt necessarily require ground forces.


----------



## mainerjohnthomas (3 Apr 2005)

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> To be relevent Canada needs to spend more money on defense, plain and simple. The Navy needs to go ahead with the CADRE project. They could use more CPF's. This would enable Canadian warships to fully participate in naval operations in support of the war on terror. Another area would be in transport aircraft. I would like to see Canada buy 15-20 C-17's. With C-17's the CF could support airlift requirements. Two tankers are coming on line, but could use 2 more. Supporting the US doesn't necessarily require ground forces.


      With respect to our American brethren, I don't see the need for C-17's and CPF to support the American armed forces, I see them needed so we can deploy and support our own forces.  As it is, if we were to send troops to Iraq today, we would have to rely on US supply lines to get them there, and support them once in place.  As a coalition partner increased airlift would make us more of a real aid, rather than a PR coup with a logistics cost that offsets any benefit.  As a nation with our own priorities and foreign policy, it is inexcusable that we are dependant on others to deploy, support, and recover our own troops.  Does anyone else remember the humiliating spectacle of Canadian armour held hostage on the high seas due to a contract dispute with a former Soviet block tank transport that we had hired to recover them?  Without the ability to deploy, support, and recover our own assets, we do not have a military option in foreign policy unless someone (US or UK) with an actual logistics capability is willing to do the grunt work for us.


----------



## mainerjohnthomas (3 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Well that was some spun story there.
> 
> Its amazing how many people and levels of government can be attacked in one article.
> 
> Raving? Or journalism? You decide.


        Hyperbole is ridiculous on the face of it.   As editorials go that one was a bit strong.   That being said, some of the points were good.   Why is it that we refused the award the US wished to honour our PPCLI snipers with?   Do you think that shows respect for the Canadians who were fighting over there?   Do you think that shows respect for the Americans who were doing the bulk of the fighting, and bleeding?   This country grabs onto any military scandal, any shame, and milks it on the front pages for months at a time.   If our troops actually shine in the performance of their duties, and in our trade, that means killing people, it is kept in the back pages, if reported at all, like it is something to be ashamed of.   Canadians died in a friendly fire incident, all honour to them.   Americans lived because of the quick and decisive action, the training and will of our PPCLI snipers, and of this our nation is not proud?   Of that attitude I am ashamed.   Canadians recently came under fire on patrol in Afghanistan (how unusual hey?) and our media tries to paint them as helpless victims endangered recklessly.   How about trained professionals who were too disciplined to start a shooting incident with no clear target for return fire.   No word on the bravery or professionalism of our troops: the implication of the articles, the stressing of the danger, implies that our troops are unwilling to face danger in the performance of their duties.   We don't have Kamikazes in our Armed Forces, but I am sick and tired of our media assuming that cowardice is the only rational reaction to danger.   I am tired of the assumption that Canada is not worth the risk to defend.   I am sick to death of a country that thinks its military is unable, or unwilling to fight, when the only moral weakness I saw in the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces came from our civilian leadership.   The article was overblown, but it pointed out some nasty truths that our people, and most especially our media, prefer to be blind to.   Our media has decided it is morally superior to be a victim than a victor.   Our military is trained to win, not to whine.   If one of the two is wrong, I know which one I choose.


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## Zipper (3 Apr 2005)

Agreed. The article is far to black and white and over stated. Which is what I was pointing out.

As for the those issues you are talking about Mainer. I agree totally. 

What I would question on this is, Is it the media's fault for printing only the "Bad, sensational" things? The Military's fault for letting them do so without comment. The Military's for not pressing the issues of "our glories". The Government for playing politics's with awards that were well earned? Etc...

The public can only make decisions with what they know. The media prints what it knows, or wants you to know. The Government only allows out what it wants you to know. And the military is constrained by the government.

So how do we solve these catch-22's?

I remember back in the day when Esprit De Corp magazine came out. It was meant to solve just some of these problems by publishing those things that the government controlled military mags would not. To bad they hardly sold. Then they started to slip down the slope to tabloid and now they are a fringe mag that is ignored by most. 

Whats the solution?


----------



## squealiox (4 Apr 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> Styen should get in another word here:



i will agree completely that politicians and others have milked this whole "peacekeeping" schtick to the detriment of our military. That "peacekeeping monument" on the $10-bill annoys the h out of me. But then again, the way mark steyn throws around accusations of cowardice like confetti at a wedding is every bit as grating.

and i realise it's not strictly relevant to his argument, such as it is, but i just can't help but wonder what military experience steyn has (or not) ...


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## Andyboy (4 Apr 2005)

The first step to making Canada relevant again is to reform the way we govern ourselves.


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## TCBF (4 Apr 2005)

"..thrown away in the form of corporate tax cuts and debt repayments."

Part of that debt is Pension Plan commitments and   CSBs.

If you pay off the debt, then we don't have to sewer our programs when the interest rates climb to 12 % again.   

Corporate tax cuts increase commerce, which you can then tax.   What you want to avoid is propping up dead dogs like Aihr Kanada and Bombardyeh.

Tom


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## a_majoor (6 Apr 2005)

Economics 101. I really wish people would pay attention in class.....



> *Evidence, Evidence, and More Evidence*
> Lower tax rates spur economic growth. End of story.
> 
> WAn opinion piece by reporter Anna Bernasek in last Sunday's New York Times actually argues that there's no real evidence that lower tax rates spur economic growth. Bernasek finds a couple of economists to back up her idea before concluding that tax â Å“reform based on a notion that taxes are bad for the economy is just that: a notion not backed by strong evidence.â ?
> ...



If we want to become relevant again, we need to ditch the high tax high regulatory environment and free the productive energies of all Canadians, rather than harness the productive energies of Canadians to feed the friends of the Liberal Party


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (6 Apr 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> Economics 101. I really wish people would pay attention in class.....
> 
> If we want to become relevant again, we need to ditch the high tax high regulatory environment and free the productive energies of all Canadians, rather than harness the productive energies of Canadians to feed the friends of the Liberal Party



More like Economics *001*!!!

Fundamental truth in the way the world works: people have a better idea of how *they *want *their money* spent than *any *government does!!!   

-This is proven by virtue of the fact that taxes are taken coercively.  :threat: 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			




-Failure to acknowledge this truth is the fatal flaw of Socialism.  :skull:


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## a_majoor (9 Apr 2005)

More backing for John Gault: Adscam is just one of the many drains on our collective resources which takes away from the potential that Canada could have had. The 20th century belongs to Canada? It took only 10 years for the Liberals to make Canada dissapear....



> One Canadian's Thoughts on AdScam
> by Guest Author at April 8, 2005 05:14 AM
> 
> by "DoubleZero"
> ...



Imagine that, a wealthy G-8 nation has so few opportunities that it makes more sense to go to mainland China. But what could possibly motivate a person to invest time, money and energy here knowing his hard work and effort will be taken to provide expensive lunches and the trappings of fine living to a few politicians and their hangers on? The potential consequences are clear.

Our economy is on life support now, the only real growth seems to be in resource extraction industries to feed the United States and China's growing demand for raw resources. Canada at this rate will be the 21rst centuries "Hewers of wood, drawers of water" in the most literal sense; China will be the nation most likely to bulldoze the WTO to allow the sale of fresh water from Canada. 

My fear is it is already too late to halt the plunge, I have heard few ideas coming from the Conservative party, and most Canadians don't seem to care. Without a flame of rightious anger burning in the breasts of the majorety of Canadians, there will be no change, and we will sleepwalk along the same path we are taking presently.


----------



## a_majoor (19 Apr 2005)

While this compares Europe to the US, the effective withering away of economic and military power is also quite evident here (military power by inference, since it takes economic power tcreate and weild "hard power")

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/weekinreview/17bawer.html?ei=5090&en=44ea05b3e068feb5&ex=1271390400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&position=



> April 17, 2005
> PERSPECTIVE
> We're Rich, You're Not. End of Story.
> By BRUCE BAWER
> ...



Same smug sense of superioraty, same economic assumptions, same results.


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (19 Apr 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> While this compares Europe to the US, the effective withering away of economic and military power is also quite evident here (military power by inference, since it takes economic power tcreate and weild "hard power")
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/weekinreview/17bawer.html?ei=5090&en=44ea05b3e068feb5&ex=1271390400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&position=
> 
> Same smug sense of superioraty, same economic assumptions, same results.



And the Leftists will continue to put their hands over their ears and plow straight on ahead ...


----------



## Zipper (19 Apr 2005)

Lol.

And once again they base all their numbers on GDP. Which of course doesn't look at the fact that the EU (and Norway) as a "people" are healthier and better off per capita, and also does not take into account national debt nor trade deficits.

There are always ways to twist the numbers to view what you want to view.

And the neo-right will continue to see through their red, white, and blue coloured glasses and plow straight on ahead...

 ;D


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (20 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Lol.
> 
> And once again they base all their numbers on GDP. Which of course doesn't look at the fact that the EU (and Norway) as a "people" are healthier



That Europeans are "healthier" is Socialist orthodoxy, not "a fact": Norway's wealth is purely a function of it's natural resources, not economic performance.



> and better off per capita



That's what per-capita GDP_ is_ ... this "fact" is the opposite of reality: the vast majority of Europeans are worse-off than the vast majority of Amrericans.



> , and also does not take into account national debt nor trade deficits.



So?  They aren't measures of wealth ... Debt:GDP is what matters vis-a-vis debt and the US ranks in the middle of European countries in that measure (and much better than several, with France and Italy coming immediately to mind, and FAR better than Canada) ... the trade deficit simply means that the US economy consumes more than it produces: in other words, people live better in the US than they "should".



> There are always ways to twist the numbers to view what you want to view.



No there isn't: you can selectively choose inappropriate statistics to draw misleading conclusions for the purpose of rationalizing socialist dogma, but eventually reality is going to hit (the subject of this thread and of the article on Norway posted above).



> And the neo-right will continue to see through their red, white, and blue coloured glasses and plow straight on ahead...



No, that's black-and-white: you know, rational economic thought, empirical evidence ...   :warstory:


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## Infanteer (20 Apr 2005)

It's funny how statistics are supplied and the counter-arguement is "healthier"....


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## Zipper (21 Apr 2005)

Fact: You cannot judge the "health" of a nation based off economics alone.

Fact: The per capita level of poverty in the States is far above that in most other 1st world nations.

Fact: The number of people who are considered "worse of" (whatever that means) may be true. But the level of disparity between those who are "well off" and those who are "poor" is far wider in the States then any other 1st world country. See above fact. Thus the gap between rich and poor is far less in Europe.

I find it funny that you take as an insult the fact that a teacher in Norway decides to, or even needs to, bring her lunch to school with her as opposed to going out and buying it? The fundamental idea that she should wish to save her money for other things of more importance I would think would appeal to those of the fiscally prudent "conservative" minded set. This idea that your "well off" because you feed into the consumerist ideal of having to buy your meals everyday seems rather poorly thought out.

But then again, everybody who is not as "rich" as you are MUST be fundamentally worse off as a whole.

Good grief.


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## TCBF (21 Apr 2005)

As far as poverty goes, Black Americans have made greater  economic gains in the last forty years than Canadians of all stripes.  So we now have a new disadvantaged economic group in North America... called Canadians.


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## Infanteer (21 Apr 2005)

Zipper - I see "facts" but no data of any sort to back them - this is why I questioned "healthy".  The article made a comparative analysis of a certain statistic and you mocked it and dismissed it.  Are you going to provide counter-factual evidence?


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## TCBF (21 Apr 2005)

He is still recovering from my post.  ;D


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## 48Highlander (21 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Fact: You cannot judge the "health" of a nation based off economics alone.



So how would you judge the "health" of a nation?   Let me guess, Americans are all trigger-happy-psycopathic-war-mongers, so therefore Europeans are automaticaly "healthier", right?   Give me a break.   Your judgement of "health" is pure speculation;   it's your opinion, which means nothing to anyone else.   Everyone's allowed to an opinion, but unless you've got some statistics to back it up, don't expect anyone to listen to you.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> Fact: The per capita level of poverty in the States is far above that in most other 1st world nations.



Really?   Wow.   US unemployment rate is below 6%, Canada's is above 7%.   Guess we must be at the top of the list of poorest 1st world nations.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> Fact: The number of people who are considered "worse of" (whatever that means) may be true. But the level of disparity between those who are "well off" and those who are "poor" is far wider in the States then any other 1st world country. See above fact. Thus the gap between rich and poor is far less in Europe.



Ofcourse it is.   What's the problem with that?   All it means is that there's a lot of hard working people who have managed to earn a lot of money, and a lot of lazy bastards who like to sit on their asses all day.   Are you perhaps suggesting that the government should take it upon itself to take away the money of those who work hard, and give it to those who don't want to work?   I'm sorry, but I'm not a big fan of communism.   You'll have to do better than that if you're trying to make the US look bad.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> I find it funny that you take as an insult the fact that a teacher in Norway decides to, or even needs to, bring her lunch to school with her as opposed to going out and buying it? The fundamental idea that she should wish to save her money for other things of more importance I would think would appeal to those of the fiscally prudent "conservative" minded set. This idea that your "well off" because you feed into the consumerist ideal of having to buy your meals everyday seems rather poorly thought out.



Making that choice is a wonderful thing.   I too try to pack a lunch whenever I can.   You seem to have misunderstood the article though.   The problem isn't that this teacher decided to bring a sandwich for lunch;   the problem is that a teacher there makes about 75%-85% of what a teacher makes here, while buying lunch there would cost about 290% of what it costs here.   That gas costs about 667% of what it costs here.   That people need to go over the border to a different country in order to buy groceries.   Go back and read the article again, and this time try not to be so damn cynical.


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## I_am_John_Galt (21 Apr 2005)

I think you are having trouble with the meaning of "fact".



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> Fact: You cannot judge the "health" of a nation based off economics alone.


Real Fact: "Health" is a subjective notion that can be supported to some degree by objective statistics.  You have made a (rather spurious) asserion without a shred of support beyond simple presumption.



> Fact: The per capita level of poverty in the States is far above that in most other 1st world nations.


Real Fact: There is no such thing as "per capita level of poverty" anywhere.  Comparison of Poverty Rates across nations is impossible, as the standards are so different.  In the United States, for example, the "poor" have access to luxuries that those living above the poverty line don't have in most other countries.


> For instance, it has been pointed out that many of the lowest ten percent of U.S. households, all officially denominated as poor, have possessions which were considered luxuries, or in some cases nonexistent, fifty years ago. (http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20031005-111129-3478r.htm)
> 
> * color televisions, 91%
> * microwave ovens, 74%;
> ...





> Fact: The number of people who are considered "worse of" (whatever that means) may be true. But the level of disparity between those who are "well off" and those who are "poor" is far wider in the States then any other 1st world country. See above fact. Thus the gap between rich and poor is far less in Europe.


Income disparity is a measure of wealth _distribution _and has no bearing on the level of wealth.  This is a typical Socialist diversionary tactic ("well sure you're better-off, but someone else might be even better-off than you"): would you rather have a $40,000 income and buddy the same, or would you rather have $50,000 and buddy $60,000: would you rather have a Lada than a Porche, only because it meant that your neighbour had to have a Lada instead of a Ferrari?  Socialism is not economics, it's _envy_.



> I find it funny that you take as an insult the fact that a teacher in Norway decides to, or even needs to, bring her lunch to school with her as opposed to going out and buying it? The fundamental idea that she should wish to save her money for other things of more importance I would think would appeal to those of the fiscally prudent "conservative" minded set. This idea that your "well off" because you feed into the consumerist ideal of having to buy your meals everyday seems rather poorly thought out.


See 48th's response: it's about _CHOICE_.



> But then again, everybody who is not as "rich" as you are MUST be fundamentally worse off as a whole.


What?  Are you trying to railroad us with more Socialist dogma ("the noble poor")?  I'll go out on a limb and suggest that if you asked a lot of poor people if they'd rather have more money, most would say "yes".



> Good grief.


No kidding!


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## Zipper (21 Apr 2005)

Ok, change of tact here.

One. There is no utopia. Socialist or otherwise.

Norway has its own problems and may have to back off of some of its grander ideals one day. But the fact remains that they are NOT in any danger of collapse, nor are the people of Norway (or any other "nanny state") going to flock to the ideals of a total free market economy such as the States. They have CHOOSEN to accept higher taxes in order that their entire population should benefit as a whole. Is there anything wrong with that? No.

Are their Americans who richer then most other people in other countries? You bet. Are their people who are poorer as well? Yes.

Of course poor people would love to have more money. Rich people want more money too. As for your comments about you working so hard for your money, so why should you give it to someone who doesn't? Typical cold hearted neo-conservative attitude. I wonder if you'd make the same statement if you happened to be the guy on the other end of the stick? Or perhaps with family members there? It is the responsibility of any Government to look after ALL its citizens, not just those who can make a contribution come election time. If it were your way, those who could not hold a job or pay for lunch would not have the right to vote.

As for the Norwegians having to cross the border for their goods. So what? Canadians cross the borders all the time to pick things up, as do Americans who come up here for medicine and beer. I'm sure there are Swedish who buy things on the other side as well.

Health as I have stated on this board before can be calculated in a much different way then just by GDP. GDP for the health of a nation is flawed and doesn't take into account the health of "people", only a segment of the economy. Your narrow scoped view of "health" relates only to those who can afford to do so, which is not the majority of the population.

Another fact that you can look up is the fact that the productivity of the EU is either very close to, if not higher then the States now. That, and on a shorter work week with more holiday time to boot. Not to mention benefits. 

Is it perfect over there? No. Can it work over here? Probably not in the same form. Is Canada doomed? Not a chance.

As for the comparison of "poverty". Which is why I stated 1st world countries. And yes, they rate them differently. Considering the facts that you stated above say the poor in the States have all these "luxuries" must mean that they ignore a large segment of their own population. In fact we know they do. They only take into account those who pay taxes and are at home when the census is done. Funny thing is, alot of those people don't have homes. I'm sure all those homeless are sitting in front of their colour TV's on that street corner right now. 

As for the American's being "trigger-happy-psychopathic-war-mongers". Not at all. There are some great people down there. To bad those in power cannot say the same. Oh, and don't forget paranoid. ;D

The fact of the matter is, that we all do things differently, and no country is going to collapse in the short term. Who knows about the next 50 years though.


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## a_majoor (21 Apr 2005)

> Health as I have stated on this board before can be calculated in a much different way then just by GDP. GDP for the health of a nation is flawed and doesn't take into account the health of "people", only a segment of the economy. Your narrow scoped view of "health" relates only to those who can afford to do so, which is not the majority of the population.



How do you define health then? GDP is a good measure since it essentially strips out many factors which could throw out comparisons. Using GDP and other information such as Purchasing power parity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity ) tells you how much of a person or a nations wealth is being spent on "health care", and although you might argue if the purchase of gym memberships or taking a brown bag lunch to work is part of "health care", then so long as you compare the same things, certain trends become very clear. Just like God is on the side with the largest battalions, the nations with the largest GDPs have more wealth in absolute terms to spend on "health care" or anything else. For example, the United States was criticized for being "stingy" with their contributions to the Tsunami disaster when measured in terms of % of GDP, but when calculated in dollar terms, they were outspending many nations which had double the % of GDP relief contributions.



> Another fact that you can look up is the fact that the productivity of the EU is either very close to, if not higher then the States now. That, and on a shorter work week with more holiday time to boot. Not to mention benefits.



Where did you get these figures from? As I have posted on the board (and have others), Europe has a very low rate of economic growth and productivity, closer to that of Canada than the United States, and certainly far behind China and India. This is an extremely important point, since compound interest grows remarkably fast with even a few % points difference. There is also a large number of unemployed in Europe, with again the figures being closer to Canada than the United States.



> Funny thing is, alot of those people don't have homes. I'm sure all those homeless are sitting in front of their colour TV's on that street corner right now.



Many of the homeless people in Canada and the United States are psychiatric patients who were removed from full time care because it was more "compassionate" for them to live at home or be "integrated" into society. Since most were incapable of maintaining a strict regime of medicines or chose to ignore the regime when it wasn't enforced, this compassionate program led to an explosion of "street people" who were and are unable to care for themselves or hold a job.



> The fact of the matter is, that we all do things differently, and no country is going to collapse in the short term. Who knows about the next 50 years though.



What happens in the next 50 years is determined by what happens now. Our lack of influence in the greater world can be traced to various policies that began in the 1960s, gutting our military and foreign service along the way. Our break-out from economic stagnation in the early 1980s can be traced to the FTA and NAFTA agreements, and the "negative" consequence of becoming tied to the US with 80% of our trade flowing south can be attributed to our underwhelming performance in the rest of the world (see the point about the 1960s).

Canada may not collapse in the sense of ceasing to exist on a map, but as the Gomrey Inquiry is demonstrating, our political structure has decayed to such an extent that Canada may be in for a radical reshaping. Perhaps the voters will sweep the Liberals out of office for a generation. Perhaps a Liberal minority can squeak through, allowing the Provinces to become "feudal domains" able to set the agenda and dictate to Ottawa. Perhaps after the chaos, people will welcome a Dictator (think of how dictators arise in other societies). What Canada do you want to live in?


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## Zipper (22 Apr 2005)

Once again your talking in economics alone! GDP and PPP are simply economic models that do not look at the true health of anything other then the economy. Because the US has a large GDP doesn't mean that the people benefit from health care or lead "healthy" lives. 

And I agree with you that they did a bang up job with the Tsunami disaster becuase they had the resources and capabilities close on hand to lend the best and fastest support. No arguement there.

However if you look at how much the US spends on foriegn aid as opposed to even us as a percentage of GDP, it falls far behind. Is that the way a world leader should act?

As for the EU productivity. Yes, it is lagging behind right now. But this is mostly due to the strong retail sector in the States. I just looked at the latest numbers. Some of the EU is on par or better (Germany, Belgium, France) then the US, while most of the others are behind. Especially the newest members and those who started out much farther behind in the first place. However this will change as the EU's balancing effects take place. Considering that they have double the population base and still growing with each new addition, it won't be long before they are even stronger.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/enterprise/enterprise_policy/competitiveness/doc/eu_competitiveness_a_sectoral_perspective.pdf

As for the homeless, I agree. But that only takes into account a certain percentage (fraction) of the homeless. The numbers of plain regular people down on their luck for one reason or another still has the majority in this catagory. Not to mention the numbers of children.

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/facts.html

This one shows that it isn't just the US and Canada with the problem. But everyone.

http://www.share-international.org/archives/homelessness/i_homelessness.htm

As for the what happens right now. I couldn't agree with you more. Government policies now do not affect us now, but at least 10 or so years down the line. Which is also why I think we should increase our trading outside of North America to insulate us agains't the policies south of the border. Their GDP may not take their deficit and trade deficit into account, but someone is going to have to pay the piper sooner or later.

AS for the Liberal's. As I've said before. Their toast. However the Adscam is small fries considering how much money was concerned. They just happened to be the unlucky ones to get caught.


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## 48Highlander (22 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Norway has its own problems and may have to back off of some of its grander ideals one day. But the fact remains that they are NOT in any danger of collapse, nor are the people of Norway (or any other "nanny state") going to flock to the ideals of a total free market economy such as the States. They have CHOOSEN to accept higher taxes in order that their entire population should benefit as a whole. Is there anything wrong with that? No.



Really?   So you're telling me that if you went up to your average norweigan and said "would you like to get taxed less?", he'd say "no, I want my money to go to the rest of the population"?   Sorry man, that's not the way it works.   People don't chose higher taxes.   It hapens exactly the way it's happened here in Canada.   Here, I'll lay it out in easy to follow steps:

1)   Special interest groups bitch, whine, and complain for funding for their pet causes.
2)   A left-wing party promises them all support for their causes.
3)   The party gets elected, and quickly realizes that they cannot implement their promises without more money.
4)   Taxes are raised.
5)   4 years go by, a new election is called.   Proceed to step 1.

In fact, in recent years, both the municipal party in Toronto and the provincial party in Ontario has been elected at least partly on the promise that taxes would not be raised.   Guess what, they got raised again.   Now you tell me how exactly the people decided that they want higher taxes.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> Of course poor people would love to have more money. Rich people want more money too. As for your comments about you working so hard for your money, so why should you give it to someone who doesn't? Typical cold hearted neo-conservative attitude. I wonder if you'd make the same statement if you happened to be the guy on the other end of the stick? Or perhaps with family members there? It is the responsibility of any Government to look after ALL its citizens, not just those who can make a contribution come election time. If it were your way, those who could not hold a job or pay for lunch would not have the right to vote.



I nearly had an aneurism after reading that.   I can still feel the vein in my forehead throbbing.   It is NOT the role of government to look after it's citizens.   That sort of attitude is exactly what's wrong with our society.   People want to be taken care of instead of taking their lives in their own hands and doing for themselves.   That is precisely what we are arguing AGAINST here;   we don't need a goddamn nanny state to babysit us.   It's YOUR life.....LIVE IT.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> As for the Norwegians having to cross the border for their goods. So what? Canadians cross the borders all the time to pick things up, as do Americans who come up here for medicine and beer. I'm sure there are Swedish who buy things on the other side as well.



I'm sure you are sure, but I'm not sure    How can you be sure?   Have you got facts to support that view?   Or are you guessing?   In which case you're not sure, now are you?



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> Another fact that you can look up is the fact that the productivity of the EU is either very close to, if not higher then the States now. That, and on a shorter work week with more holiday time to boot. Not to mention benefits.



See a_majoor's reply.   You're statistics that nobody else seems to have heard of.

In fact if you type "average EU GDP" into google, you will immediately see several articles predicting a coming drop in the GDP, and not one predicting growth.   Then if you try typing "average EU GDP growth" into google, you will find several sources which confirm that the GDP of the EU has in the past years grown about 1%-2%.   On the other hand, if you type "average US GDP growth" you will find several articles stating that US GDP grew at about 3.3% untill 2000, and has been growing at a rate of about 2.7% ever since.   Now, please show me how the productivity of the EU is "very close to, if not higher than the States".



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> As for the comparison of "poverty". Which is why I stated 1st world countries. And yes, they rate them differently. Considering the facts that you stated above say the poor in the States have all these "luxuries" must mean that they ignore a large segment of their own population. In fact we know they do. They only take into account those who pay taxes and are at home when the census is done. Funny thing is, alot of those people don't have homes. I'm sure all those homeless are sitting in front of their colour TV's on that street corner right now.



Here is an article dealing with homelessness that I really liked.   Basic gyst:   before Clinton took office, estimated homeless figures were through the roof.   Ofcourse, as soon as a Democratic president took office, homeless advocacy groups miraculously discovered that homelessness was in a steep decline, and continued to stay at very low levels for 8 years.   A few months after George W Bush took office, homeless figures once again miraculously balooned, and have been growing "at an unprecedented rate" ever since.

The figure most often quoted for homeless in the US is 3 million plus.   The only scientific polls ever conducted showed the figures at less than a million, buit were never publicized;   after all, everyone knows that republican presidents only cause bad things to happen to people, therefore the "polls" must be inaccurate.

Meanwhile, the great and benevolent EU has between 1.1 million and 2.4 million homeless people.   Statistics on it are surprisingly hard to find.   It seems that Europeans don't like to publicize their homeless quite as much as Americans do. 

If we want to look at poverty instead of homelessness, 14.5% of the US population live in "poverty" compared to roughly 18% in the EU.   Socialism doesn't seem to be making great strides in that area either.

So the figures aren't quite as different as people seem to think.   And anyway, it's besides the point.   You asked earlier if I would "make the same statement if you happened to be the guy on the other end of the stick".   Well that question is not valid to begin with.   Why am I not homeless?   It's not because I was born privilidged, or with special gifts or powers.   I'm not part of the Zionist plot to control all the banks, nor am I the epitome of human evolution.   I'm just an average person who understands that he must work in order to provide the neccessities of life.   I know that my level of success and wealth is directly proportional to the ammount of effort I put into obtaining it.   You also asked how I would feel if a member of my family were "on the other end of the stick".   Would I expect the state to provide for them?   Hell no.   They're my family.   They're not related to the government.   I would work my ass off and provide for them myself.  That's the way it's been done all over the world for thousands of years.  It's not the role of government to babysit us and breast-feed us throughout our lives.  We control our own lives;  we make them what they are.  And for the times when we ARE down on our luck, we have family and friends to help us out.


And while I was typing this, you wrote your own reply.   So I'm gonna take a second to answer that too.




> However if you look at how much the US spends on foriegn aid as opposed to even us as a percentage of GDP, it falls far behind. Is that the way a world leader should act?



I'm not too sure about those stats, but Americans spend way more as INDIVIDUALS than we do.   Considering how much lower their tax rate is than ours, it makes sense, and should balance out nicely.   How about you go find some numbers for a change?



> As for the homeless, I agree. But that only takes into account a certain percentage (fraction) of the homeless. The numbers of plain regular people down on their luck for one reason or another still has the majority in this catagory. Not to mention the numbers of children.



The article you posted is a red herring.   It shows the percentage of those in "poverty" who are "down on their luck".   You were trying to show that the majority of "homeless" were down on their luck, no?   In fact, if you try to do a search on figures for "causes" of homelesness, you won't get anywhere.   Every "action group" out there quotes different statistics.   Womens groups claim that the major cause of homelessness is "domestic abuse".   Homeless advocates claim it's lack of affordable housing.   Other studies blame it on divorce.   And ofcourse, the "neocons" blame it on drugs, alcohol, and mental issues.   Which one's right?   Your guess is as good as mine.   Find some reliable figures, otherwise bickering about it is pointless.


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## larry Strong (22 Apr 2005)

Well I guess I am a "cold-hearted neo conservative", I have worked hard for 30 some years, I am really tired of seeing that my taxes equate to what a lot of people gross in a year. It has been stated that welfare parents begate welfare kids.
Well as King Ralph said one night  "Get a job you bum"


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## Brad Sallows (22 Apr 2005)

On the subject of Norway and Alberta, it never ceases to amuse me that some of the same people who complain that Alberta should not be pointed to as an example of the pre-eminence of "right-wing" principles of government in the Canadian context simultaneously point to Norway as an example of the pre-eminence of "left-wing" principles of government in the greater scheme.  Guess what they have in common other than relatively small populations?


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## Zipper (22 Apr 2005)

I'll speak to that last part first.

Hmm...      ...welfare kids are begot by welfare parents? So we should get rid of welfare and let them all starve to death? Or do we try to give those kids the best chance of breaking the cycle as possable?

And your quoting someone who puts his foot in his mouth everytime his handlers are not there to control him. Great.

As for the rest.

And I guess its hard for you to accept that the Scandinavian countries "chose" to go down the path they have? Do you actually believe with the levels of taxation they have, that is was just a slow slide? C'mon. They WANTED to go there and it works for them. 

http://www.sweden.se/templates/cs/BasicFactsheet____3927.aspx

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108008.html

So if a Government is not supposed to look after its citizens? Then what is it for?

Guess you had better shut down all the Ministries. Since they are all there to look after ALL the people of this country. Or are you saying that they should only look after the privileged people? Or only the ones that pay taxes? Or only the ones that make contributions to political parties? Or just business?

Funny. I could have sworn that a country was run with similarities to a business? And we all know that the happier and healthier the workers are, the more productive they will be. But then we had better cancel your benefits package as well, and let you buy your own.

As for the looking after family. Agreed. That is the way its SUPPOSED to work. Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there that cannot afford to look after themselves, let alone family. As well as a lot of just plain selfish people who choose not to look after their families. So what should happen to those people? Starve as well?

As for numbers of homeless at any point in time in US history or under what politics they happen to land. Big deal. The fact that they are there at all is a shame. And of course the EU has homeless. Everyone does. Its a global problem that needs to be addressed. But if we take those numbers you just posted and then took a look at the population of the EU in comparison, then you would think those numbers would be alot higher considering they have nearly double the population base as well as the newly entered members from the old eastern block. But then maybe we should just look at the numbers you presented, and judge for ourselves.

As for the border crossing thing. I guess you should live by a border sometime and watch the private traffic both ways.

The point is...                     ...other governments, whether more social or not, work fine for those who live there. If they didn't, you'd see alot more revolutions. But you do not. SO they work. Get over it.


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## larry Strong (22 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> And your quoting someone who puts his foot in his mouth everytime his handlers are not there to control him. Great.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Brad Sallows (22 Apr 2005)

>As for your comments about you working so hard for your money, so why should you give it to someone who doesn't? Typical cold hearted neo-conservative attitude. I wonder if you'd make the same statement if you happened to be the guy on the other end of the stick? Or perhaps with family members there? It is the responsibility of any Government to look after ALL its citizens, not just those who can make a contribution come election time.

OK, I feel guilty.   But my guilt (or lack thereof) is my own; so what?   Why should I pay to support someone who lives in, say, New Brunswick but not someone who lives in Maine or for that matter in Myanmar?   Because one lives on the "correct" side of a line on a map?   What is your compelling moral argument, other than the fact that you want to use the point of a gun (which I agree should be there only to maintain peace so that people can take responsibility for their own liberties) to redistribute the resources of others in order to feel good about yourself?   Why is it the responsibility of Government to look after its citizens (by which term I infer you really mean "subjects" since Canada more and more resembles a government which owns a nation and people rather than vice versa) and not the responsibilities of citizens to look after themselves?   Even if we are to have that sort of Government, why should its powers extend any further than the people of my own community and region to whom I may have some tangible connection, as opposed to the centralized monstrosity of federalism which benefits at my (and my neighbours') expense some people I do not know and with whom I may very well share no cultural affinity and to whom my only connection is a vague political one occasioned by where the borders were drawn?

Compassion only exists when you give freely.   Political redistribution can never be compassion.   If I give charitably, a net good is achieved and I obtain moral credit for the act.   When something is taken by force from one person (bad) and given to another (good), there is not necessarily a net good achieved and there is no moral credit to the person doing the taking and giving.   A compassionate liberal by definition can only ever be one who gives freely of his own and tolerates the social and economic freedom of others to do as they please.   Those who wish to call themselves "compassionate" and "liberal" must follow the rules, or else search the dictionary and proudly adopt and proclaim the terms which truly describe them.

It would be one thing if some people simply wanted to take money directly from me and give it to someone else.   But what actually happens is that a large bureaucracy is established to manage charity, and the insult and inefficiency are compounded by the fact the bureaucracy won't simply take my money and otherwise keep its nose very much out of my private matters.   I went through a phase of my young adulthood where I supported Liberal and NDP candidates at the federal and provincial levels.   But for those inclined to use the power of the state to pursue their self-fulfillment it's like a form of political crack.   They can't stop.   They simply can't help themselves.   There is always another cause, another change to make, another way in which they imagine they could do more good coupled with the arrogant belief they have the right to do so and not be accorded the status of "tyrant".   Where does the line get drawn; where does the involvement of Government end?   Ever?


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## Brad Sallows (22 Apr 2005)

>However if you look at how much the US spends on foriegn aid as opposed to even us as a percentage of GDP, it falls far behind. Is that the way a world leader should act?

What percentage of its GDP does the US spend on a trade imbalance in what amounts to a giant charity scheme (because much of it is consumptive spending) that keeps how many people employed in the developing world?  Maybe you should add that to the balance.


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## Brad Sallows (22 Apr 2005)

>So if a Government is not supposed to look after its citizens? Then what is it for?

Since you ask, the sufficient purpose of government is to safeguard the rights of its citizens.  It need do nothing more.  When it starts to do more, it necessarily infringes the rights of some citizens to provide various forms of social and economic security for others.  When some of the people decide to use the authority and power of the government which was established to provide essential security to obtain for themselves privileges and to dictate to others what choices in life they should make, and what penalties others must pay for whatever frivolous or potentially self-destructive pursuits they enjoy, a threshold of unreasonable tyranny (of the majority) has been crossed.  There is an almost unlimited number of regulations we might impose in the pursuit of some imagined good, and there are those among us who imagine themselves to be wise enough and to be possessed of some inherent power to save the rest of us from our foolhardiness.  I would prefer they spend their days at the beach pounding sand in an effort to make the grains finer and more luxurious to the feel of my bare feet.

In plainer terms, there are some things like publicly-funded health insurance and basic welfare which are worthwhile enterprises; but as I note above, I've yet to meet a socialist who knows when to retain and practice his good ideas solely for the benefit of his own self-advancement and amusement.  There are very, very few true social liberals - many who would grant on the one hand, say, same-sex marriage and permit vices of which they avail themselves would on the other hand act to constrain perceived vices which they don't understand or enjoy and therefore deem unnecessarily harmful.  For example, those who want no constraints on their behaviour in the bedrooms of the nation but expect the publicly-funded health care system to bail them out of their indiscretions would do well to exercise no interest at all in the gun lockers, tobacco pouches, and fast-food wrappers of anyone else.


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## Zipper (23 Apr 2005)

> I personally don't care how many times he puts his foot in his mouth,he's done good things for this province, and in my opinion, thats what counts.



I guess you don't mind the fact that Alberta has one of the worst environments in country? One of the fastest rising number of cases of cancer? Lousy Educational standards? Etc...

Fine, he's done a great fiscal job. But at a price. Lets hope that he starts to remedy things now that he's paid off.

Brad - You world doesn't even exist in the States. And while there may be more social liberal's then you think (or social conservatives for that matter). Their are defiantly far to few people who wish to give anything of what they earn to a good cause. In fact it is rather funny that Newfoundland which has been for years the poorest of the Provinces has given the most to charity. And that is now falling as they make more money.



> Where does the line get drawn; where does the involvement of Government end?  Ever?



It stops where the "people" feel it should stop. That may be farther in Scandinavia then we are comfortable with, but it does not mean that they should not go there. We will go as far as we (the majority) wish our government to go. Sometimes that requires backing off of something a few years later as a bad idea. But that is the way it goes.

As for safeguarding the rights of its citizens. What rights would exist in your world except the right to do as you please? The Government is there to not only protect us from outside forces (foreign interests), but to also protect society as a whole from its own selfish people. Hence why we have laws and police.



> Even if we are to have that sort of Government, why should its powers extend any further than the people of my own community and region to whom I may have some tangible connection, as opposed to the centralized monstrosity of federalism which benefits at my (and my neighbours') expense some people I do not know and with whom I may very well share no cultural affinity and to whom my only connection is a vague political one occasioned by where the borders were drawn?



This worries me. You can say the same thing as "why should I care beyond the boundaries of my backyard". We are a country, and thus our boundaries are large and involve everyone inside of them. Its called being a Canadian. I prefer to see myself first as a Canadian, then a (transplanted) Albertan, then an Edmontonian. I guess you go the other way around.

Also with the world getting smaller with globalization, we cannot NOT call everyone in it a neighbor. And I would go so far as to say that we are all connected in some way, and thus everything that goes on is of concern to us all. Scary? You bet.

As for your implied fears of us (or anyone) falling into communism. It won't happen. Communism (and any other totalitarian regime) has been proven to be a dead end. Can we tip towards it (or fascism)? Yes. As history proves, any country can make bad choices under certain circumstances. But I don't believe we can (or will) ever go there.


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## larry Strong (23 Apr 2005)

Personally I could not give a sweet rats a** about the enviorment. Every day you see some new tree hugger screaming about the sky about to fall.
As for cancer....well something is going to kill me in the end, so who cares.


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## 48Highlander (23 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> And I guess its hard for you to accept that the Scandinavian countries "chose" to go down the path they have? Do you actually believe with the levels of taxation they have, that is was just a slow slide? C'mon. They WANTED to go there and it works for them.



What?   did you even read the links you posted?   Neither one of them supports your stance at alll!   In fact, the second one has the following to say:



> An elaborate structure of welfare legislation, imitated by many larger nations, began with the establishment of old-age pensions in 1911. Economic prosperity based on its neutralist policy enabled Sweden, together with Norway, to pioneer in public health, housing, and job security programs. Forty-four years of Socialist government were ended in 1976 with the election of a conservative coalition headed by ThorbjÃƒÂ¶rn Fälldin. The Socialists were returned to power in the election of 1982, but Prime Minister Olof Palme, a Socialist, was assassinated by a gunman on Feb. 28, 1986, leaving Sweden stunned. Palme's Socialist domestic policies were carried out by his successor, Ingvar Carlsson. Elections in Sept. 1991 ousted the Social Democrats (Socialists) from power. The new coalition of four conservative parties pledged to reduce taxes and cut back on the welfare state but not alter Sweden's traditional neutrality. In Sept. 1994 the Social Democrats emerged again after three years as the opposition party.



Sure seems like a turbulent past and a slow decline into socialism to me.




			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> So if a Government is not supposed to look after its citizens? Then what is it for?
> 
> Guess you had better shut down all the Ministries. Since they are all there to look after ALL the people of this country. Or are you saying that they should only look after the privileged people? Or only the ones that pay taxes? Or only the ones that make contributions to political parties? Or just business?



If it were up to me, I WOULD shut them down.   The Federal government exists for only two reasons:   to protect the nation from outside attack and to handle disputes between provinces/states.   The provincial government should exist only to regulate transportation and manage relations between cities.   And municipal governments should exist only to control crime, handle emergencies, and control development.   That's it.   Even the US government has exceeded it's mandate; originaly it was supposed to stick to the terms I outlined.   In fact, the US government was originaly forbidden from owning ANY land, or even keeping a standing army.   Why?   Because the people understood that the more power the government has the more opportunity for abuse and incompetence there is.   That's why we should take care of our own lives;   because the more levels of beurocracy you add to any given program, the more money is "lost" and the more chance there is that someone will use that program for their own purposes.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> Funny. I could have sworn that a country was run with similarities to a business? And we all know that the happier and healthier the workers are, the more productive they will be. But then we had better cancel your benefits package as well, and let you buy your own.



Cancel my benefits package and give me a raise?   I'd be thrilled!   Because that's what we're talking about here.   My money is being sucked away to pay for services I have no interest in.   If I wanted medical coverage, I'd buy ensurance.   If I wanted education for my children, I'd provide it myself or pay for it.   If I wanted a gun registry or a sponsorship scandal....well, you get the idea.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> As for the looking after family. Agreed. That is the way its SUPPOSED to work. Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there that cannot afford to look after themselves, let alone family. As well as a lot of just plain selfish people who choose not to look after their families. So what should happen to those people? Starve as well?



Ya know, as cold hearted as it sounds, evolution has served us well for milions of years.   Our current policies have stopped it in it's tracks.   While I hate to see people suffering, I also have no interest in funding a crack-addicts habit.   Some sort of assistance SHOULD be offered to people.   Those too sick or insane to accept it should be institutionalized.   The rest will accept what they're given and improve their lives.   They don't want to improve their lives?   Well then fuck 'em.   We should give people an opportunity, not care for them all their lives.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> The point is...                     ...other governments, whether more social or not, work fine for those who live there. If they didn't, you'd see alot more revolutions. But you do not. SO they work. Get over it.



No, they don't work fine.   I think the Canadian political system is shit.   I'm just too stubborn and patriotic to pick up and move to the US.   A lot of other people are pissed off at the high tax rate too, but all they do is grumble and complain.   Why?   Because when things get bad gradualy, people learn to accept the changes.   Revolutions only happen when EVERYTHING collapses at once, or when a truly worthy cause emerges.


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## TCBF (23 Apr 2005)

There ia a  certain advantage to boiling a Frog slowly - by the time it realizes it is in mortal danger, it is too late to do anything about it.


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## Zipper (23 Apr 2005)

You must lead a very very sad lonely existence Larry. :'(   I wonder if you have kids to pass that sorry attitude onto?

As for 48th - Sheesh. I hear there may be some survivalist militia in minnisota looking for recruits. And I wonder how you can maintain that patriotism in the face of all that hostility towards our country? And yes, the Government represents and is thus our country. And as for those benefits you so reluctantly pay into...             ...take it from someone who used to have the same attitude until I suddenly needed them and they saved me and my families financial life.



> Ya know, as cold hearted as it sounds, evolution has served us well for milions of years.   Our current policies have stopped it in it's tracks.   While I hate to see people suffering, I also have no interest in funding a crack-addicts habit.   Some sort of assistance SHOULD be offered to people.   Those too sick or insane to accept it should be institutionalized.   The rest will accept what they're given and improve their lives.   They don't want to improve their lives?   Well then **** 'em.   We should give people an opportunity, not care for them all their lives.



I won't go so far as you on this. But in some ways I agree. We shouldn't allow people to live (suck) off the system. The Ontario unemployment/retraining for work program (or whatever it was called) that Harris brought in was in my mind a good way to go. It finally got a friend of mine out of the work to unemployment to welfare to work (repeat) cycle. But then some people need care for the rest of their lives. Its a case by case basis.

And I did read your links. In fact I accidently posted the same one to prove MY point that they keep choosing to go back to that government because that is where they wish to stand.


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## Brad Sallows (23 Apr 2005)

>It stops where the "people" feel it should stop.

Basically, if enough of you and friends can get together to strong-arm me, that's the way it goes.  You do realize that is the essence of what you propose, do you not?

>The Government is there to not only protect us from outside forces (foreign interests), but to also protect society as a whole from its own selfish people.

I get the part about preventing foreigners or citizens from infringing our rights.  Maybe you should clarify what you mean by protection from selfish people.  Some guy doesn't want to share his income with you and you figure we should just take what we want?

>This worries me.

Why does devolution of power and authority worry you?  Why should local governments not in fact control most of the government activity in this country?

>I prefer to see myself first as a Canadian

That's nice.  So do I.  Do you think that implies some obligation on my part to you, or vice versa, other than to respect your fundamental rights?  You have a certain idea of what it means to be Canadian.  Do you truly feel you have the right to impose it on any one other person?

>As for your implied fears of us (or anyone) falling into communism.

I have no fear of falling into communism.  What I respect is the demonstrated tendency of people to abuse the power of the state.  Responsible self-government requires restraint.  I think the US got at least two things right at the start: the most important thing a free people can do upon establishing their government is to recognize that the fundamental human rights are in fact inalienable (and not something granted by government) and that the most important role of constitutional and other foundation documents is to clearly define and limit the power of government.


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## larry Strong (23 Apr 2005)

Actually I lead a full an active life, have a group of good friends, and yes I have 2 kids that were not dope headed thugs, both have good jobs, and live life according to the good book, and I even have a granddaughter. Just because I don't sit around and fret about things i have no control over, does not mean I have a lonely life. As to their politics, I don't really know, they are 2 grown ups and can make up their own minds.


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## I_am_John_Galt (23 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> It is the responsibility of any Government to look after ALL its citizens,



That was the exact moment you lost me.

"Give me your money; I work the government.  I will do what's best for you, because I know what you need better than you do.  _Trust me_ ;D.  Besides, if you don't give your money you will be incarcerated ... where's my limo?"


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## Zipper (23 Apr 2005)

Larry - You do? Thats wonderful. Congrats. I find it rather disturbing that with all those wonderful kids you would have the attitude of "somethings going to kill me, oh well.". but then I say...    ...Oh well too.



			
				Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> >It stops where the "people" feel it should stop.
> 
> Basically, if enough of you and friends can get together to strong-arm me, that's the way it goes.   You do realize that is the essence of what you propose, do you not?



Actually its called democracy. That ideal form of government that we have these days and are thus forced to live with.



> >The Government is there to not only protect us from outside forces (foreign interests), but to also protect society as a whole from its own selfish people.
> 
> I get the part about preventing foreigners or citizens from infringing our rights.   Maybe you should clarify what you mean by protection from selfish people.   Some guy doesn't want to share his income with you and you figure we should just take what we want?



You don't understand this part? You know. People who break the democratically arrived at laws for their own gain. Otherwise known as criminals. That includes breaking tax and business laws. 



> >This worries me.
> 
> Why does devolution of power and authority worry you?   Why should local governments not in fact control most of the government activity in this country?
> 
> ...



Actually I don't see a problem with our civic governments having a great deal of the responsibility (rather then power). In fact with our population gathering more and more in cities, I see it as something that needs to happen. However it doesn't matter where the "power" lies, you will still have corruption and abuses of that power. But you also have to realize (which I don't think you grasp) that for the most part, the playing field should be as level across the country as possable. You cannot call yourself a country if one side of it is in the slums, while the other is flying high on the hog. This includes one city over another. Yes, we still have our problems that way. But at least attempts are made to solve it.



> >As for your implied fears of us (or anyone) falling into communism.
> 
> I have no fear of falling into communism.   What I respect is the demonstrated tendency of people to abuse the power of the state.   Responsible self-government requires restraint.   I think the US got at least two things right at the start: the most important thing a free people can do upon establishing their government is to recognize that the fundamental human rights are in fact inalienable (and not something granted by government) and that the most important role of constitutional and other foundation documents is to clearly define and limit the power of government.



Then if this were the case (Which I do not think has ever happened except for the first 30 seconds after the US constitution was signed), why is it that the US federal government has so much power over the people? All they have to say is "national security" and suddenly they have camera's and police everywhere and neighbors turning in each other on suspician of speaking against the government (terrorism). Otherwise I think you had better go and read the charter of rights again.

Something I think you, and many who look to the US as a perfect system, do not understand is the fact that we come from (for the most part) countries where we were RULED by a single person or family. We chose through various means (rebellion or otherwise) to have elected those people who RULED over us. Our (and others) government is not just there as an administering body, but to RULE over (be the figure head of...)   the country in question. Which is why we pay them so much and give them fancy titles and places to live.



			
				I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> "Give me your money; I work the government.   I will do what's best for you, because I know what you need better than you do.   _Trust me_ ;D.   Besides, if you don't give your money you will be incarcerated ... where's my limo?"



As above. Their called tax laws. And if you don't like it. Don't vote for them. And I don't think they know what is better for YOU then you do. But they may have a better idea of what society as a whole needs better then you do.


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## I_am_John_Galt (23 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> As above. Their called tax laws. And if you don't like it. Don't vote for them. And I don't think they know what is better for YOU then you do. But they may have a better idea of what society as a whole needs better then you do.



Hate to break it to you, but Canadian (or any other) society is not a monolith: it is made up of 30 something million "yous".  Government doesn't know better what the needs and wants of any of these individuals separately (except possibly the mentally retarded), so why would it know any more when they are taken in aggregate?  The theoretical maximum wealth of a society is simply the aggregation of all individuals acting to maximize their own rational self-interest; thus, any perversion of this, that is, anyone artificially restricted from maximizing their own wealth, _necessarily_ destroys the total actual wealth in that society.


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## Zipper (23 Apr 2005)

What form of twisted philosophy are you reading? Or is that from Adam's economics? As for the "yous" and government. They can only act upon what the majority of the "yous" demand and then vote for.

I suggest you read European Dream by Rifkin. It takes a good look at the American dream and the new European dream and does a comparison. No he doesn't fall on one side or the other, but he does a good job of looking at the pro's and con's of each.


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## muskrat89 (23 Apr 2005)

> Then if this were the case (Which I do not think has ever happened except for the first 30 seconds after the US constitution was signed), why is it that the US federal government has so much power over the people? All they have to say is "national security" and suddenly they have camera's and police everywhere and neighbors turning in each other on suspician of speaking against the government (terrorism).



BS - Please tell me your own, PERSONAL experience in this

If an American was on here making such generalizations about Canada, some of you guys would be crying up a storm. All of my life, I heard how "arrogant" the Americans were, making their dumb, redneck suppositions about life in Canada. Seems the arrogance has found its way north. I've never encountered so many "experts" on life in the US, as I have on this board. For the umpteenth time, I have lived in the US for almost 15 years, and have never seen this stuff that some of you guys come up with.   :


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## 48Highlander (23 Apr 2005)

Yeah, Muskrat, seems like everyone outside of the US is an expert on what life there is like.  We get a lot of tourists here from the UK and Germany, and some of the things I hear from those people are just mind-blowing.  They all seem convinced that if a cop sees you jaywalking, a squad of SWAT officers will rappel down from a chopper, drag you away, and throw you in a hole in the ground in Gunatanimo Bay for the next 80 years.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> Actually its called democracy. That ideal form of government that we have these days and are thus forced to live with.



Actually, no, Zipper, that's not a democracy at all.  What you're describing is Mob Rule.  True, a democracy is a system where the people decide who will represent them.  It is NOT a system where groups of people can impose their will on other groups whenever they so chose.  When my money is taken away from me, wether "by law" or at the point of a gun, in order to pay for a program of some special interest group or another, that's not a democracy.  It's either Mob Rule or Communism....which are pretty similar anyway.  Otherwise, what's to stop say, my regiment from walking into a bar, and taking all the beer we want without paying for it?  After all, we're in the majority, therefore we should be able to do what we want, right?  That's you idea of "democracy" at a smaller level.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> As above. Their called tax laws. And if you don't like it. Don't vote for them. And I don't think they know what is better for YOU then you do. But they may have a better idea of what society as a whole needs better then you do.



When's the last time you voted for increased taxes?



The ONLY thing we seem to agree on so far is the idea of work-fare instead of welfare.  I have no problem sponsoring a program to put people to work.  What I DO have a problem with is paying people to sit on their ass.  I once knew a guy once who'd work 6 months out of every year, then intentionaly get himself fired so he could spend the next 6 months at his parents cottage fishing, drinking beer, and collecting unemployment insurance.  He is the ultimate result of the nanny-state;  why work when you can play?


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## Zipper (23 Apr 2005)

48Highlander said:
			
		

> When's the last time you voted for increased taxes?



I think the majority did when we voted in the last election?



> I once knew a guy once who'd work 6 months out of every year, then intentionaly get himself fired so he could spend the next 6 months at his parents cottage fishing, drinking beer, and collecting unemployment insurance.   He is the ultimate result of the nanny-state;   why work when you can play?



His name wasn't Steve was it? Sounds alot like that friend I referred too. Except the work-fare put a stop to that and allowed him to re-train in something he was finally good at (graphic design). Now he has money, a job, and travels more then I do (bastard).

As for the American bashing. They have alot of things that work fine. Some that work fine for what THEY want to accept, and other things that do not work.

The things that work are usually ignored. The things THEY accept that many outside of the US do not are focused upon, and those that do not work are flogged about like a dead horse. What else is new.

My point was. The freedoms of the individual down there did not survive the control of the government especially when they bring out the "national security" mantra. So to say that our government controls us any more then their's does down there is rather silly. Our government is just going in a different direction then they are by the will of the people. If this were not so, then they would been voted out long ago. 

It also doesn't mean I agree with our government on all issues either, whether it is civil, provincial, or federal.


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## 48Highlander (23 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> I think the majority did when we voted in the last election?



Actually, in the last election I was promised no tax increas.  In the one before that too.  Both times they broke the promise.  Try again?



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> His name wasn't Steve was it? Sounds alot like that friend I referred too. Except the work-fare put a stop to that and allowed him to re-train in something he was finally good at (graphic design). Now he has money, a job, and travels more then I do (bastard).



No, not Steve 



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> My point was. The freedoms of the individual down there did not survive the control of the government especially when they bring out the "national security" mantra. So to say that our government controls us any more then their's does down there is rather silly. Our government is just going in a different direction then they are by the will of the people. If this were not so, then they would been voted out long ago.



Right.  You must not have been paying attention to what's happened in Canada since September 11th.  The Canadian government has implemented the following bill's:  C-36 C-35 C-7 and C-45.  Go look them up.  They're our version of the Patriot Act, and give us even more leway when persecuting "terrorists" than the Americans have.  Before you go pointing the finger at the US, get to know what your own country is doing.


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## Infanteer (23 Apr 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> fundamental human rights are in fact inalienable (and not something granted by government)



Is this true though?   If the Charter isn't around to guarantee them (vis-a-vis the State) and/or the State itself is non-existent, then do they exist within a Hobbesian State of Nature?


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## a_majoor (23 Apr 2005)

I will avoid appeals to Adam Smith, Pericles, Ayn Rand or other historical/literary/philosophical figures zipper, and ask you a practical question in two parts:

1. If, as you say, the Government's job is to look after ALL the people, reflect on the "Billion Dollar Boondoggle", Shawinigate, Adscam or putting seven billion tax dollars out of Parliament and the Auditor General's perview through the creation of "foundations" (which have been strangely silent for all these years), then tell us, who exactly is being looked after here?

2. The examples listed above add up to over $10.1 Billion dollars CDN. I'm sure a quick read over the news archives can pull up many billions of more tax dollars spent on equally dubious causes by our government. If health care is your priority (based on past posts), how is allowing this much money to be diverted from the private economy helping health care?

I am with John Gault and the rest of the libertarian crowd here in thinking that if the people who created that $10.1 billion dollars in wealth had kept it and spent or invested it as they saw fit, we would all be better off, happier, healthier, with a mostest increase in our standard of living and perhaps even a government which actually did its job and looked after the security of Canada.


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## I_am_John_Galt (23 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> What form of twisted philosophy are you reading? Or is that from Adam's economics? As for the "yous" and government. They can only act upon what the majority of the "yous" demand and then vote for.


By "Adam's economics" are you referring to Adam Smith?  I've never in my life heard it called "Adam's economics", which really make me wonder how much you know about it ... the twisted philosophy I am actually referring to represents the ideas of Adam Smith, Hayek, von Mises, Friedman, the Austrian School, the Chicago School, the School of Salamanca, Locke, Franklin, Rousseau, Burke, Ricardo, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other assorted "social individualists, libertarians, extropians, futurists, 'Porcupines', Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe."*   



> I suggest you read European Dream by Rifkin. It takes a good look at the American dream and the new European dream and does a comparison. No he doesn't fall on one side or the other, but he does a good job of looking at the pro's and con's of each.



I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry: Jeremey Rifkin is a well-known neo-Luddite nutjob who at one time was the personal advisor to the President of the EC.  The full title of his latest gormless diatribe book is _The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream_, which would take a herculean effort of willful ignorance to think that "he doesn't fall on one side or the other."  This is the guy Time Magazine called "the most hated man in science" for his various crusades ...
Instead of changing tacks (every time your arguments are defeated), maybe you should consider chaning your methodology: instead of searching for arguments to fit your conclusions, try drawing conclusions from the evidence as it exists ... it might even lead you to question the validity of your existing conclusions!  ;D



			
				a_majoor said:
			
		

> 1. If, as you say, the Government's job is to look after ALL the people, reflect on the "Billion Dollar Boondoggle", Shawinigate, Adscam or putting seven billion tax dollars out of Parliament and the Auditor General's perview through the creation of "foundations" (which have been strangely silent for all these years), then tell us, who exactly is being looked after here?


Let us not forget also the billion dollars 'misplaced' in failing to track land claims settlements through Indian Affairs.


*Stole the last part from Samizdata.net; kinda long, but it flows so well ...


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## 48Highlander (23 Apr 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> 1. If, as you say, the Government's job is to look after ALL the people, reflect on the "Billion Dollar Boondoggle", Shawinigate, Adscam or putting seven billion tax dollars out of Parliament and the Auditor General's perview through the creation of "foundations" (which have been strangely silent for all these years), then tell us, who exactly is being looked after here?



Well there's a simple solution.  Just stop voting for 'em!


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## larry Strong (23 Apr 2005)

Yeah, Look at the mess we are in now...Mr Dithers is going to try and make a deal with the Smartypants from Toronto.... :skull:


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## Zipper (24 Apr 2005)

Majoor - No arguement here. I've never said I have supported the liberal's and all their ideas/fiasco's/wastes. I agree, don't vote for them. On that issue, I would just argue that it is not only the Liberal's who have done these things in the past. Yes they are the latest pigs at the trough, but hardly the first or the last. Is there time up? Maybe. In some ways I hope so.

John - Oh nice come back there.   ;D Your reference to many sources is fine. Doesn't mean I would agree with all of them, of course. :

I find alot of todays run away economics and consumerist ideals rather stupid. Whatever happened to building something right the first time out of a material that lasts? Instead they make it out of plastic so that it only lasts 3-5 years and then you need to buy a new one. Give me metal!! And why can't the kids today wear hand me downs? I did! Sheesh!!

Yes Rifkin is rather contriversal down there. Hell, anyone left of Frum and Coultor are controversal down there. But I'll stick by him in this book as presenting some good ideas and not weighing in on one side or the other to much. Or are you to stuck in your thinking to even look at something that is NOT the American dream?

As for my arguments being defeated. I don't think so. I just realize that I am not going to change anyones mind here, so why try and argue something to death and let it get nasty. But something has to be said at times to somehow balance your (To me) extreme right wing neo-conservative ideals. Considering the fact that I have stated many times where I stand on the political landscape, it makes you guys look like your so far out in right field as to be putting a crick in my neck. And I'm standing in right field, if only a little right of center.


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## TCBF (24 Apr 2005)

"find alot of todays run away economics and consumerist ideals rather stupid. Whatever happened to building something right the first time out of a material that lasts?"

Zipper, when you write things like that, you just make so much sense, none of us can understand why you don't agree with us all of the time! ;D

But that's OK.  Maybe I agree because I had to buy a grinder and a bondo kit today.  I would have thought a car body would have lasted longer than 12 years and 366,000 km...

Fact is, if you build it cheap, you can sell it cheap, and I can buy it cheap.  Walmart is not Prada.  We have choice.  Consumers vote with their wallets.


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## Brad Sallows (25 Apr 2005)

Pure democracy is certainly not an ideal form of government.  Ask the Athenians.  In any system in which government is chosen and decisions are made by an electorate it is still necessary to have institutional barriers to excessive concentration of power and tyranny of majorities.  The US has not a perfect system, but it does have a system built on principles and limitations which have stood reasonably the test of time (during a period of unprecedented technological, economic, and political evolution) and are uncommon even among governments of the nations which might be considered as mostly free and prosperous.  We thought for a long time the parliamentary system served us well and some still do; I find the potential abuses of the PMO warrant a re-examination of our system.

A "level playing field" is certainly imperative where rights and treatment under law are concerned, but not really any further, particularly in social and economic matters.  All that does is engender frustration and retard growth.  People vary in the degree of restriction they are willing to trade for security.  Economic equalization breeds stagnation.

If you enjoy being ruled, great.  Do not expect me to join you.  I don't need a ruler.  If you are a moral person, respect my wishes in that regard.  Do not presume there is any significant pool of people who are somehow inherently capable of judging what is best for society.  Have you not noticed how the biggest f***-ups in history have been caused by people with good intentions and the power to pursue them?

>If the Charter isn't around to guarantee them (vis-a-vis the State) and/or the State itself is non-existent, then do they exist within a Hobbesian State of Nature?

Yes; with the inherent rights comes the inherent power to safeguard them.  I don't claim it has to be easy.  What the inherent rights are is not in my view even a question; all that is in question is whether anyone or any government might seek to infringe them.  I don't consider absolute anarchy to be a desirable state; the simplest social organization or government has at least the immediate advantage of establishing customs and rules by which we are granted some security in exchange for small sacrifices to our liberties - mostly theoretical sacrifices if we are moral people.  In my view that security removes from us some basic levels of anxiety and worry which enable us to be even more prosperous than if we had to be constantly vigilant of those around us.  The ongoing argument is over how much security we must have - some of us want more, and some are satisfied with less.  This in itself would not generate much heat if it weren't for the fact that those in pursuit of more security frequently insist everyone be forced to provide it and participate in it.

What it comes down to is this: even if you deem me mean-hearted, miserly, self-centred, and despicable, you should - by moral imperatives - respect my freedom to be that way.  That is the essence of liberalism.  If you do not, you are merely a shade of tyrant.


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## Infanteer (25 Apr 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Yes; with the inherent rights comes the inherent power to safeguard them.  I don't claim it has to be easy.  What the inherent rights are is not in my view even a question; all that is in question is whether anyone or any government might seek to infringe them.  I don't consider absolute anarchy to be a desirable state; the simplest social organization or government has at least the immediate advantage of establishing customs and rules by which we are granted some security in exchange for small sacrifices to our liberties - mostly theoretical sacrifices if we are moral people.  In my view that security removes from us some basic levels of anxiety and worry which enable us to be even more prosperous than if we had to be constantly vigilant of those around us.  The ongoing argument is over how much security we must have - some of us want more, and some are satisfied with less.  This in itself would not generate much heat if it weren't for the fact that those in pursuit of more security frequently insist everyone be forced to provide it and participate in it.
> 
> What it comes down to is this: even if you deem me mean-hearted, miserly, self-centred, and despicable, you should - by moral imperatives - respect my freedom to be that way.  That is the essence of liberalism.  If you do not, you are merely a shade of tyrant.



I still don't agree that "Rights" exist in the absence of a state (or some other form of social organization which has the will to do so) to enforce them.  

(Drawing back on my Heinlein) there is no "Right to Life" - I can easily prey on people and kill them; how do we possess a "Natural Right" in nature when other animals prey on humans (cougar attacks occur once in a while).

Right to Freedom of Association or Freedom of Speech?  Again, another can easily interfere this and, in the absence of a state or social system to define these rights, there is really nothing one could do about it.  Where is it written in Nature that one has the privilege of speaking without fear of infringement by another?

Bring in the State (in its various incarnations).  The Rights and Freedoms we enjoy are artifice; they are a construct based upon mutual consent and backed by coercive force.  I fully agree with you that one can be a "mean-hearted, miserly, self-centred, and despicable" human being and be guaranteed to live their lives like this - call me a Libertarian or whatever.  However, if this Freedom were not guaranteed by a social construct, then nothing in Nature would protect a petulant person from getting eaten by a lion.


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## Brad Sallows (25 Apr 2005)

The existence of a natural right is not accompanied by practical immunity from infringement (which would be a sort of super-right, I suppose, if there were some agent to enforce it).  There is, however, an implied power to resist infringement.

I may have commented earlier on what I consider to be an important qualification to what we loosely term the "right to life".  It would be better phrased as "right not to be deprived of life unjustly".  It is not an exemption from inclusion in the food chain.  Ideally, it would drive us to seek only retribution less than death on our transgressors and to avoid deadly force except in just defence of life.

Your natural rights exist whenever you do.  You don't need society to create or provide for you a right to life or freedoms of conscience.  You don't need others to do anything at all to provide those rights; all you require is that others refrain from infringement.  That we elect to form societies and governments to assist us to safeguard our rights is a consequence of the realization that we have rights we might wish to safeguard and that people are not immune to the impulse to infringe our rights for selfish purposes.

One of my points is this: the less we collectively infringe on the rights of individuals, the better we are.  That does not seem to be the current vector of "Canadian Values", and a great many people have deluded themselves otherwise.


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## Zipper (26 Apr 2005)

Wow. Good writing Brad. 

I see your point. But answer me this?

How do you purpose to keep individual's from infringing on "your" rights without having a social order (government)?

And on that same note. Since the pursuit of individual money/power/influence is usually with/upon the cooperation of others? How do you purpose that those who help you to your individual ends are also compinsated in kind?

In other words, I'm saying that I agree that there can never be a "true" level playing field as that would also be an extreme of which we do not wish to encounter. However...       ...why is it that often the pursuit of the individuals goals are often on/by the backs/blood of those who do not wish it? Are you not treading upon their rights?

Another way of looking at it is...     ...their will always be people who in the pursuit of power/money/influence will do so by infringing upon the rights of others in order to attain it. As well, they will continue to do this in order to stay in that position. How do we avoid this if not by laws/rules within the social order?

As to your first installment. I myself prefer to have less security. I feel that this world of more security is acually making everyone feel less secure. Why must I pay more money for home insurance if I do not have a security system? Why must I feel like I must close every window and lock every door (except the back) even if I'm in my backyard? Whatever happened to letting the kids play street hockey out front? Its like we're all paranoid of each other.


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## Brad Sallows (26 Apr 2005)

In the absence of social order you alone safeguard your rights.  The outcome may not be fair, but the process will be just.  The instant you and another guy agree to come to each other's aid over some infringement of rights, you have established a social order.  A family is a social order.  I doubt there will be, or ever was, a complete absence of social order.

Cooperation is obtained by contract.  The contract can be as simple as a spoken agreement.  In the absence of a legal mechanism to enforce contracts, there is an implied social mechanism: no one contracts with one who can not be trusted.  Bad faith has a cost.  The reality is that most agreements which we find necessary in a complex and advanced society require complex, written contracts.  However, note also that many forms of contracts are almost pro forma.  Not a lot of original contract language has to go into a home sale, for example. 

There will always be manipulative and deceitful and greedy people.  They will tend to seek out power structures which facilitate their goals.  For those reasons I prefer to minimize government power as a precaution against the inevitable.  The system of government we establish to safeguard our rights, can in turn abuse those rights if not controlled.


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## Infanteer (26 Apr 2005)

It's getting tricky to do late-night fencing on 2 threads on the same general topic.... :blotto:



			
				Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> In the absence of social order you alone safeguard your rights.



Agreed - although I fail to see how there is a natural right involved here.  I could decide that I had a right to the entire river valley, and if I scared all away with my stick and they willingly left, what mechanism would determine that I had acted unjustly?




> The outcome may not be fair, but the process will be just.



How is "Just", like "Rights", determined outside of the context of the artifice of society.  You said above that the right to life should be rephrased as the *"right not to be deprived of life unjustly"* (thereby justifying the food chain), but what is the difference between a lion tearing apart a gazelle for its meat and a guy knifing another person for his property so that he can buy food/crack/whatever to sustain himself?



> The instant you and another guy agree to come to each other's aid over some infringement of rights, you have established a social order.   A family is a social order.



Is the family really social order, or is it a survival mechanism?  Do other species have families for the purpose of social order?  Do we?  I agree that families (and other kin groups) can bring social order because cooperation is involved, but I don't think families are social order that are responses to protect a set of "rights" that we can all deduce in a state of nature.



> I doubt there will be, or ever was, a complete absence of social order.



Agreed.  I seem to remember that most "Contract Theorists" agreed that a situation with no contract was more of a philosophical abstract.  Order, like power, abhors a vacuum (and Man is by nature a political animal, or whatever that was all about)....



> Cooperation is obtained by contract.   The contract can be as simple as a spoken agreement.   In the absence of a legal mechanism to enforce contracts, there is an implied social mechanism: no one contracts with one who can not be trusted.   Bad faith has a cost.   The reality is that most agreements which we find necessary in a complex and advanced society require complex, written contracts.   However, note also that many forms of contracts are almost pro forma.   Not a lot of original contract language has to go into a home sale, for example.



Agree generally.  Although you may want to stick Coercion in their somewhere - I don't recall many societies in the last 5 or 6 millenia bartering their social contracts.  



> There will always be manipulative and deceitful and greedy people.   They will tend to seek out power structures which facilitate their goals.   For those reasons I prefer to minimize government power as a precaution against the inevitable.   The system of government we establish to safeguard our rights, can in turn abuse those rights if not controlled.



Agreed.


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## Edward Campbell (26 Apr 2005)

I never, ever agree with Jim Laxer; sometimes, today is one of those rare occasions, I do accept much of his analysis of a situation even as I reject his conclusions.

Here is Laxer in today's _Globe and Mail_ at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050426/COCRISIS26/TPComment/TopStories  I have highlighted the items which I hope a harper government will implement.



> More than politics, this is a national crisis
> 
> By JAMES LAXER
> Tuesday, April 26, 2005
> ...



I agree with Laxer that:

"¢	Canadian political parties have been divided into two essential groups. First, there are the parties of what we can call the "Canadian system," the Liberals and the NDP. These parties broadly support the present division of powers between Ottawa and the provinces and, with some important disagreements, the present role of government with respect to social programs, higher education and the environment. They even agree, more than they like to admit, on foreign policy. Then, there are the parties of radical decentralization, the Conservatives ... and the Bloc Québécois.

"¢	Stephen Harper and his party are committed to a dramatic reduction of the role of Ottawa in Confederation.

"¢	... the parties of what [he] called the "Canadian system" are in disarray.

I also agree that: _â ?Mr. Duceppe would then launch a sovereignty referendum while Mr. Harper, his current collaborator in sacking the Liberals, is prime minister. While many Quebeckers would resist the siren call of separation, Mr. Duceppe's case would be greatly strengthened by the presence in Ottawa of a neo-conservative government with whom Quebeckers would have little sympathy.â ?_  But, big *BUT*, many more Québecers, especially the _soft nationalists_, will find much to like in Harper's proposals to let them, and Albertans, too, be _maîtres chez eux_ by implementing a national version of Mike Harris' very good question: _â ?:Who does what to whom?â ?_, with the implicit follow-on, "... and why must we all try to duplicate one another's efforts and step on one another's toes?â ?  Many Québecers, faced with a choice between a relatively sovereign Québec within a looser but friendly federation and a completely sovereign Québec facing a hostile Canada, will opt for renewed federalism.

I do not agree that: Canadians "would be very shortsighted, however, to believe that this crisis is only about a corrupt governing party that has been in power for too long.â ?

Neither Harper nor Martin planned this but, and here I agree with Laxer, the country finds itself near a crossroads.  We may turn left, back to bureaucratic mediocrity or right, towards smaller, more independent, more efficient and effective and interlinked governmentss forming a confederation.


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## larry Strong (26 Apr 2005)

Let's turn right then


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## Blue Max (26 Apr 2005)

Here the author shows his real strips, "It falls to Paul Martin, a decent and honest, though not particularly progressive, political leader to staunch the wounds and save the great party of the Canadian centre."

Jim Laxer exposed himself for a Liberal supporter that is desperate to find a way for his party to survive while running away so that the stench of the Gomery enquiry doesn't soil his delicate palit. So he and other Liberals are left with that tried and true Liberal tactic of FEAR MONGERING.

What a bunch of BS. The Liberals have done next to nothing for this country in the last 10 years considering they have had unrivaled power. Dare I say it, Mulroney had in my estimation accomplished more (right or wrong, still debatable) during his short tenure then Chretien. :dontpanic:


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## larry Strong (26 Apr 2005)

And expect to see a lot more fear mongering from the Liberals next time round.


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## Edward Campbell (26 Apr 2005)

Blue Max said:
			
		

> ...
> 
> Jim Laxer exposed himself for a Liberal supporter that is desperate to find a way for his party to survive while running away so that the stench of the Gomery enquiry doesn't soil his delicate palit. So he and other Liberals are left with that tried and true Liberal tactic of FEAR MONGERING.



Jim Laxer is anything but a Liberal, even the farthest left wing of the Liberal party is way too conservative for Laxer.

Jim Laxer was a leader of the _Waffle_ - a movement designed to drive the (then fairly new) NDP farther to the left - so far left that David Lewis and Ed Broadbent had to drive Laxer (and Mel Watkins) and the other hard left types out of the party's central agencies.

Laxer, like almost all the _loony left_ is at panic stations because a Harper *majority* is within reach and Harper is a radical decentralist, a fact he does work very hard to disguise.  Harper's programme terrifies Laxer and the left, as it should.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (26 Apr 2005)

Too left for Ed Broadbent?????....WOW!


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## muskrat89 (26 Apr 2005)

So, with all this talk of Quebec separating, Alberta unhappy, the Maritimes being better served as a regional player... do any of you see a broken/different Canada in the future. If so, will it be better off?


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## I_am_John_Galt (26 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> John - Oh nice come back there.   ;D Your reference to many sources is fine. Doesn't mean I would agree with all of them, of course. :


You don't have to: one of the features of libertarianism/neo-liberalism (or whatever you want to call it) is that it's rationale is bulletproof ... you should probably read some of their stuff before you disagree with it, though.  There's even a few newsfeeds you can add to your reader (Cafe Hayek, The Angry Economist and Samizdata.net come to mind). 



> I find alot of todays run away economics and consumerist ideals rather stupid. Whatever happened to building something right the first time out of a material that lasts? Instead they make it out of plastic so that it only lasts 3-5 years and then you need to buy a new one. Give me metal!! And why can't the kids today wear hand me downs? I did! Sheesh!!


There's no "stupid" when is comes to consumers: people buy what they want.  It seems that people would rather have something cheap and disposable than expensive and long-lasting ... makes a lot of sense when you think about how quickly fads and trends come and go.  If you want "quality" stuff that lasts, you can generally find it, but it costs a lot more. 



> Yes Rifkin is rather contriversal down there. heck, anyone left of Frum and Coultor are controversal down there. But I'll stick by him in this book as presenting some good ideas and not weighing in on one side or the other to much. Or are you to stuck in your thinking to even look at something that is NOT the American dream?


Rifkin's controversial pretty much everywhere except Europe, where as with any American who expresses sufficient hatred of America, he is deified by the socialists (see: Moore, Michael).  It is a worthy (and necessary) exercise to challenge the scietific method and all of it's findings, but in Rifkin's case he chucks it wholesale, and replaces it with his own presumption and superstition.  This is the numbnuts who in the past has pontiificated on everything from genome therapy to farming to overpopulation to economics without any background whatsoever and with the blind faith (in himself) that only the most ignorant of the environmental movement can match.  He is a modern-day Malthus or Chicken Little, who doesn't even understand the basics of what he is going on about.


> As for my arguments being defeated. I don't think so. I just realize that I am not going to change anyones mind here, so why try and argue something to death and let it get nasty. But something has to be said at times to somehow balance your (To me) extreme right wing neo-conservative ideals.


But your arguments have been countered by simple, logical, rationale and supported by examples.  You've been tossing-out made-up facts (probably from Rifkin's books; he kinda has tendency to say "the statistics" support him, without actually knowing (or caring) what they are) and had them soundly refuted.  And yet you persist ...



> Considering the fact that I have stated many times where I stand on the political landscape, it makes you guys look like your so far out in right field as to be putting a crick in my neck. And I'm standing in right field, if only a little right of center.


Maybe I'm a bit of an anomoly because I don't really share the "social conservatism" implied by neo-conservatism: I'm more of a libertarian in that sense ... labels aside, I think it's really very important to look at the political and ecnomic underpinnings of society: when viewed as objectively as possible, with a basic understanding of how wealth creation and distritbution works, I do not see how anyone could not agree with the values of free markets: it is better for the individual and better for society as a whole.  People complain about the "myth" of the American dream (tell that to Schwartzenegger) but the essence of capitalism is that you are rewarded for what you do; Socialism plays on people's ignorance and fears and is built on much bigger myths!


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## I_am_John_Galt (26 Apr 2005)

Edward Campbell said:
			
		

> Jim Laxer is anything but a Liberal, even the farthest left wing of the Liberal party is way too conservative for Laxer.
> 
> Jim Laxer was a leader of the _Waffle_ - a movement designed to drive the (then fairly new) NDP farther to the left - so far left that David Lewis and Ed Broadbent had to drive Laxer (and Mel Watkins) and the other hard left types out of the party's central agencies.
> 
> Laxer, like almost all the _loony left_ is at panic stations because a Harper *majority* is within reach and Harper is a radical decentralist, a fact he does work very hard to disguise.  Harper's programme terrifies Laxer and the left, as it should.



I dunno, I don't think that most Quebecois are all that excited for separation, but rather are unhappy with Confederation _as it is currently constituted_.  The Liberals have done an incredible marketing/smear job in keeping the CPC/PC/Alliance off the map in Quebec, but it might get interesting in the post-Adscam world.  'Radical decentralization' could be a very strong sell in Quebec, as it already is in Alberta ... I also happen to think that it would make for much stronger and more properous country.

Adrew Coyne recently made some comments on how New Zealand reformed their system: I think this would make a lot of sense in the Canadian context as well:


> National Post
> May 15, 2004
> 
> *Kiwis have the cure for Canada's Adscam *
> ...


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## Infanteer (26 Apr 2005)

*You can slap on all the controls and accountability mechanisms you want, that is, but so long as ministers have the means, motive and opportunity to interfere, interfere they will.*

This goes in line with what Brad said earlier:



			
				Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> There will always be manipulative and deceitful and greedy people.   They will tend to seek out power structures which facilitate their goals.   For those reasons I prefer to minimize government power as a precaution against the inevitable.   The system of government we establish to safeguard our rights, can in turn abuse those rights if not controlled.



It all sounds about right to me.

As for the NZ relationship between the bureaucracy and government, sounds interesting and worth considering - a check and a balance that exist within the Westminster system of governance.


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## Zipper (27 Apr 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> Maybe I'm a bit of an anomaly because I don't really share the "social conservatism" implied by neo-conservatism: I'm more of a libertarian in that sense ... labels aside, I think it's really very important to look at the political and economic underpinnings of society: when viewed as objectively as possible, with a basic understanding of how wealth creation and distribution works, I do not see how anyone could not agree with the values of free markets: it is better for the individual and better for society as a whole.   People complain about the "myth" of the American dream (tell that to Schwartzenegger) but the essence of capitalism is that you are rewarded for what you do; Socialism plays on people's ignorance and fears and is built on much bigger myths!



A true capitalist system (total free market) is as bad as a total "any" system. Its takes advantage of many to the gains of few. Yes wealth gets created and distributed, but not very far below those at the top. You have to have some social mechanisms in place in order for "all" your citizens to be survive. The more social systems, the closer the gap between rich and poor until you reach a certain point where it all falls apart and you ddescendinto communism (a total system). The key is to find that happy balance that the electorate wishes to sustain. Some want more social (usually those without), while others less (usually those with). I would like to find a happy middle ground. I think it can be sustained economically if we chose to do so and in some circumstances change the rules of economics to apply.


As to the other argument going on. One thing people seem to forget is. Regardless if you have Liberal's, Conservatives or NDP (Hell, green for that matter) in power, you will always have the temptation to use that power to your own ends. Patronage and other forms of croneism's have been going on for as long as governments have been formed. Even the NDP in Ontario during their little tenure fell into the trap.

Like I said before. The Liberals just happened to have their hands in the cookie jar when they got caught. 200 million is not even a drop in the bucket with how much they handle each year, and there have been far larger losses of money in past governments (Liberal and otherwise) that we have chosen to ignore. All this is, is an opportunity to play politics (by the opposition) and to fill a rather slow news week/month (by the media) desperate for ratings.


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## larry Strong (27 Apr 2005)

But if I am not mistaken, previous losses have been because of poor programs or piss poor management of said programs. The Liberals were caught using the money for their own purely partisan Party purposes that had nothing to do with the rest of the country, and to the best of our knowledge the other party that has been in power has not miss-used public funds like that. well IO am out of herefor two weeks of work, I imagine this and the other thread will still be here ;D


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## Edward Campbell (27 Apr 2005)

I am not a natural fan of _Parson_ Manning, but this, from today's _Globe and Mail_ at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050427.wxcopreston27a/BNStory/specialComment/ rings true.  (My emphasis added.)



> We have become a nation in waiting
> 
> By PRESTON MANNING
> Wednesday, April 27, 2005 Updated at 7:27 AM EST
> ...



His repeat of Michael Bliss' comment that _ ''The equation of health care with the Canadian identity is unhistorical and untrue. We can't begin to have a serious, adult debate about the future of health care until we abandon the mantra that our national identity is somehow tied up in a state monopoly of health insurance.'' _ is very important.  Of course Bliss is correct.  More important, the reverse is also true: *we cannot begin to have a serious, adult debate about the future of Canada until we abandon the mantra that our national identity is somehow tied up in a state monopoly of health insurance.*  If all we have to define ourselves as a nation is 'free' health care then we do not deserve to exist as a nation and we are a disgrace to the real men and women who built this fat, peaceful, self-absorbed country and to those who fought and died to defend it.


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## I_am_John_Galt (27 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> A true capitalist system (total free market) is as bad as a total "any" system.


The simple fact that a system is not half-assed does not make it inherently bad or faulty ... where does this wonderful Canadian 'value' that compromise is necessarily best come from?



> Its takes advantage of many to the gains of few.


No it doesn't: in a true capitalist system no-one _can _be taken advantage-of and everyone who is willing to work gains.  What you've written is an anti-capitalist myth: you are confusing Corporatism (which is actually a form of Socilaism) with Capitalism (Socialists have purposefully done this for years).



> Yes wealth gets created and distributed, but not very far below those at the top.


Completely false: one of the greatest features of laissez-faire Capitalism is that wealth gets distributed according to ability and effort, regardless of pre-existing socio-economic status.



> You have to have some social mechanisms in place in order for "all" your citizens to be survive.


No you don't.



> The more social systems, the closer the gap between rich and poor until you reach a certain point where it all falls apart and you ddescendinto communism (a total system).


Not true: the more social systems based upon the 'good intentions' and nepotism of some particular social elite (who always seem to manage to skim off the top for themselves) you create, the more you distort the system of rewards and the more social stratification you create: you almost invariably most hurt the ones you are trying to help.  While some degree of stratification is desireable, as it creates a system of hope of rewards even for those born without political connections (see "American Dream"), anything created for non-economic reasons (i.e., where it becomes more rewarding to work for or bribe the government/party) is counter-productive.  You destroy wealth, leaving everyone worse off (except the aforementioned elite): it's not about who has the biggest piece of pie, it's about how big you can make the pie.  Check out the gini index some time.



> The key is to find that happy balance that the electorate wishes to sustain.


There is NO happy balance: in Socialism those that contribute most to society are always punished the most for doing so: that "the electorate" wishes to sustain this is purely a function of the nation's level of economic illiteracy.  An NDP MLA hopeful was on TV the other day informing us  that "debt doesn't matter" (so we should spen as much as we can get away with).



> Some want more social (usually those without), while others less (usually those with).


Exactly; but it's because those without have been led to believe that they will be better off by punishing those with.



> I would like to find a happy middle ground.


There is none: you can't possibly believe that should person A be forced to give money person B solely because person A works his a$$ off while person B can't be bothered to get off HIS a$$ and expect person A to be happy about it (unless of course you bombard him with socialist propaganda from cradle to grave, also paid-for by him).



> I think it can be sustained economically if we chose to do so and in some circumstances change the rules of economics to apply.


No, it can't: the whole point (which is ignored in socialist economic theory) is that the underlying laws of economics are immutable: socialism will always lead to ruin (or in Hayek's words, Socialism is inevitably "The Road to Serfdom").  Raising minimum wage is not going to create jobs regardless of how many time Jack Layton says it will.  Period.



> As to the other argument going on. One thing people seem to forget is. Regardless if you have Liberal's, Conservatives or NDP (heck, green for that matter) in power, you will always have the temptation to use that power to your own ends. Patronage and other forms of croneism's have been going on for as long as governments have been formed. Even the NDP in Ontario during their little tenure fell into the trap.
> 
> Like I said before. The Liberals just happened to have their hands in the cookie jar when they got caught. 200 million is not even a drop in the bucket with how much they handle each year, and there have been far larger losses of money in past governments (Liberal and otherwise) that we have chosen to ignore. All this is, is an opportunity to play politics (by the opposition) and to fill a rather slow news week/month (by the media) desperate for ratings.



Funny you suggest that the NDP would somehow "fall into the trap": if anything, with their affinity for centralization and authoritarianism they would be more likely than either of the other major parties to create a bigger and more dangerous trap.  Saying that the Liberals "just happened" to get caught is slanderous: you presuming guilt of people who haven't even been in a position to commit the crimes you are suggesting!  If you were to say that because the Liberals have been in power for so long corruption was inevitable and that as long they remained in power it was only a matter of time before they got caught, I might be a little more inclined to agree with you ...


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## 48Highlander (27 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> A true capitalist system (total free market) is as bad as a total "any" system. Its takes advantage of many to the gains of few. Yes wealth gets created and distributed, but not very far below those at the top. You have to have some social mechanisms in place in order for "all" your citizens to be survive.



    Every living system in nature is based on competition and cooperation.  From the smallest cells in our bodies, to the animal kingdom, and into human society, ALL living organisms compete against eachother, and form aliances to work together.  Our bodies are made up of billions of cells which, over millions of years learned to cooperate in order to form a greater whole.  Yet, at the same time, as anyone who's studied the human body at the celular level can tell you, they're also competing against eachother.  The cells of our brains for instance compete in order to feed on chemicals produced by different glands.  Cells which receive the right combination of chemicals become neurons.  Those which fail to get the required chemicals become support cells, or they die.  All the cells of the body compete with eachother in order to receive the right chemicals/nutrients, but not all of them can be succesfull, otherwise you end up with too many cells of one type, and too few of another.  So this system of competition also helps sustain the cooperation neccesary for the human body to function.

  The same system of competition and cooperation exists also in human society.  As individuals we compete against eachother in order to secure what we need to survive and become more succesfull.  Some of us become more succesfull and propser, while others achieve less, or die.  But at the same time, just like our cells cooperate to form a greater whole, we cooperate in order to form groups and governments.  At the most basic level, all of our competition, and the basis for the cooperation which forms our societies, is powered by the imperative to ensure that we survive, and that our children have a better chance to survive.  That's why communism and socialism fail; not just because they don't take human nature into account, but the nature of ALL life.  All life is driven to succeed; to obtain what it needs to survive, and to procreate and ensure the survival of it's offspring.  When you take away the imperatives which drive us, you end up with a dysfunctional system which encourages stagnation.  Can you imagine what would happen if you had the ability to ensure that every cell in your body received the same ammount and same type of chemicals and nutrients?  You could ensure the survival of every cell, but by removing the need for cooperation and competition, and by making all the cells "equal", you as an individual would cease to function.  You'd disintegrate into your component cells, which would then stagnate and die.  The same analogy works for human society.  Once you remove the need for us to compete in order to ensure our survival and success, you destroy the basis of what constitutes life, and by removing the need for competition, you also remove the need for cooperation.  

    Now I know you're not advocating the communist ideal, but rather a compromise socialist system where everyone has the same basic level of wealth, while people are still free to compete in order to achieve more.  That's certainly better than communism, but it's still going against the principles of life.  You're advocating cooperation which benefits only the weakest members of society.  Cooperation in nature never works that way.  We don't cooperate with eachother out of some utopean ideal of helping those weaker than us; we cooperate because we understand that as a group we can be stronger than as individuals.  But we don't cooperate universaly - we cooperate with those who we see as being able to assist the greater whole.  For instance, sports teams accept members who play the given sport well, and who can fill a role on the team.  Companies hire workers who have a skill which the company needs.  Any group which wishes to be successful always discriminates when accepting and rewarding members; otherwise they'd fall apart.  Imagine a company which hired workers regaurdless of qualifications.  Imagine a baseball team which allowed anyone to join.  Sure, those people who never had a chance to play baseball would now have that opportunity, but at the same time, the team would have no chance of competing against others.  And being a member of that team would no longer have any meaning, which would lead to the best members leaving and striking out on their own.  The same logic applies to all human society, from the smallest interactions between social groups to the level of governments, and beyond.  We only cooperate in order to improve our own chances at survival and success;  remove that barrier, force cooperation without discrimination, and you're going against millions of years of evolution, and the nature of life itself.  Wether you like it or not, life REQUIRES death and failiure just as much as it requires success.  We can change the ways in which we compete and cooperate, but we cannot remove the need to do so, and we cannot remove the imperatives which drive us without inviting disaster.

    What's all that mean?  It means that within our societies we NEED people who are unsuccesfull just as much as we need those who are very succesfull.  One extreme serves to show us what happens when we cease to compete, the other shows us what we may be able to achieve through effort.  If we allow the weaker members of society to impose their will on the stronger, and in some misguided attempt to help out "the greater whole" we ensure that everyone, regaurdless of effort, can attain some level of success, while placing a cap on just how successfull they can be, we remove a lot of the driving force of life from that society.  We ensure that the weak can become stronger, but we also ensure that as a whole we become weaker.  And on a global stage we still have to compete against other systems which have no qualms about culling the weak from their ranks.  A society which ensures the survival of it's weakest members at the expense of it's own strength is one which cannot hope to compete against societies which do not.  Once again, it's the nature of life.  The cells of any animal cooperate to form it's body, but at the same time they compete in order to make that body as strong as possible - after all, weak bodies have less chance of surviving than strong ones.  The level of cooperation and competition doesn't stop there because those bodies come together to form social groups wether they be packs, tribes, gangs, or governments.  And once again, all the bodies within that social group cooperate in order to form it, yet they also compete in order to make it as strong as possible - after all, a strong tribe is more likely to survive than a weak one.  And at the global level, governments cooperate in order to form alliances which banefit them.  But they also compete in order to make those alliances as strong as possible - otherwise what's the point of an alliance?

    I think I'm starting to repeat myself a now, but I've tried to provide a lot of examples of why socialism is unnatural and counterproductive.  To me it's all quite clear - I see examples of it in life all around me, and I know that wishing that we could all be nice to eachother and live as one big happy human family isn't realistic.  It's great to want to help the poor and disadvantaged - I try to give money to the homeless occasionaly, or donate to whatever cause appeals to me - but I also know that we cannot FORCE ourselves to support individuals when it weakens the whole.  It's a mistery to me why others can't see it just as clearly.


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## Zipper (27 Apr 2005)

Ok, this is going to jump around a little.

First. The basic tenant that you seem to be forgeting (whether it is cell compitition, or the strongest survive) is that modern society recognizes that ALL people are equal under the law. The society that you seem to buy into is that you everyone MUST work hard, get all they want, and to hell with everyone else. The problem with this is that those who have, have an easier time of having. While those who do not have, must work much harder to have. While this, in and of itself makes sense, and is the way it works for the most part. The problem I have is with those people who cannot have.

There are whole sections of society (handicapped, mentally ill, accidents, etc.) that need the opportunities to participate in order to be self sufficent within society. Your model would cast them aside and let them rot. Or even worse, make their futures dependant upon those who have, feeling that they would like to contribute something to help them.

I am not advocating that only the weakest recieve help, or that we get rid of compation, nor that we have to all be upon some kind of false "level" playing field when it comes to income. 

I am also not going to buy into the staunch individualism of libertarianism. This reliance upon the "goodwill" of those who have does not work as we all know that people are basically selfish bastards, and when left to their own devices will look after themselves only. And this also leads to surfdom in that those who have, eventually have all. And those who do not, have to beg those who do for jobs, etc. This is why we're seeing such a widening gap of the rich and poor (and destruction of the middle class) in the States (and here as well in many cases). Total corporatism works off of this ideal.

What I am trying to get at is the basic ideals of libertarianism where you look after yourself and your family (through hard work), but expand that to include your neighborhood. My points are that community "health" (job oppurtunity, health, enviroment, etc) is more important to the whole then a single individual who has more then all those around them. Yes there will be those within the community with more then others, but so what. As long as each person is doing something for the health of the community (whatever that may be), it works. It is a shift in thinking. Nothing more. Is it utopian? Yes, but I would not want to see it go that far down that path, as its starts entering into dangerous ground. If we all thought this way, we would not necassarily need all the social programs because they would already be taken care of within (an by) the community. The only question is, how large a community (family unit on up) could this model support?

Does this require social programs run by government? I don't know. 

My problem with the economic model that todays world (since Adam's introduction of such) seems to buy into is that it assumes that all resources are unending, and that absolutely everything is a resource. From human workers, to air, water, oil, gas, metals, to time, etc... And thus everything is for sale, and money can be made from it. Its wrong. All things have an end.


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## I_am_John_Galt (28 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Healthcare is not free. You pay taxes to make it availible to everyone.
> 
> Healthcare in the States is still under backlogs. Especially for those who do not have the money to go to elite private care. Ie. You pay more money, the less time you wait.


I think you are making up facts again: prove it (organ donor transplants waits don't count).



> So don't get the idea that backlogs are just a Canadian thing. Its everywhere in every system.


Backlogs are quite common in socialized medicine (the UK is another that has horrible problems).



> Yes it is not running to well and is broken in many ways.


But anyone with an elementary understanding of  economics knows that this was inevitable.



> It needs fixing.


It needs _ending_.



> More money will not do it all,


Romanow seemed to think it would.



> nor will dismantling it in favour of private health care.


How do you know?



> Maybe running a combination in some way may serve? Two tiered. Will it work? Well we seem to be going there regardless, so lets wait and see.


We are going there out of _necessity_: people are demanding better accessability and when the chipa are down, don't care who provides it.  The bureaucracy of the existing system is collapsing under it's own weight, as one would expect: this is exactly why the Soviet Union collapsed.



> Daycare. If set up properly it will work great.


No, it won't.



> Is it for everyone? No. It works great for those households where both parents are working, which is rapidly becoming the majority.


And I suppose that both parents having to work has nothing to do with oppressive levels of taxation.  Do you see the logic?  Tax the crap out of people, so both parents have to work, necessitating daycare; raise taxes more so they can't afford (with their after-tax income) private childcare, and then poof!  socialism to the rescue, with bureacratic, overly-expensive childcare focussed on the needs of the providers, not the children.  Great system.



> Is it as good as one parent staying home to raise the child? In most cases no. But it is there to help out all those parents who do not make enough regardless of two incomes to have properly trained daycare centers help take care of their kids.


See above: they _need _two incomes because each is taxed so highly: really, it's quite simple.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> Ok, this is going to jump around a little.
> 
> First. The basic tenant that you seem to be forgeting (whether it is cell compitition, or the strongest survive) is that modern society recognizes that ALL people are equal under the law. The society that you seem to buy into is that you everyone MUST work hard, get all they want, and to heck with everyone else. The problem with this is that those who have, have an easier time of having. While those who do not have, must work much harder to have. While this, in and of itself makes sense, and is the way it works for the most part. The problem I have is with those people who cannot have.


What?



> There are whole sections of society (handicapped, mentally ill, accidents, etc.) that need the opportunities to participate in order to be self sufficent within society. Your model would cast them aside and let them rot. Or even worse, make their futures dependant upon those who have, feeling that they would like to contribute something to help them.


No, the point is that everyone is self-reliant and has an opportunity to participate: socialism makes people dependent on others (actually the state) ... the real problem is that EVERYONE ends-up reliant on the bureacratic and inefficient (at best) state (as we currently do for healthcare).



> I am not advocating that only the weakest recieve help, or that we get rid of compation, nor that we have to all be upon some kind of false "level" playing field when it comes to income.


Huh?  I think that's the problem we are all forced into receiving 'help' from the nanny-state: the end result is that society is worse-off. 



> I am also not going to buy into the staunch individualism of libertarianism. This reliance upon the "goodwill" of those who have does not work as we all know that people are basically selfish bastards, and when left to their own devices will look after themselves only.


This is the whole point: people ARE basically selfish bastards, and if you try to pretend that they are not, you WILL be taken advantage-of.  Important to remember that "selfishness" does not necessarily mean personal financial reward (as the socialist propaganda claims): if you feel best about yourself by paying a portion of your income to be bombarded with pro-government, pro-socialist propaganda, then go fill your boots!  BUT why the heck should I be forced to pay for the CBC, when I'd rather my hard-earned money go to researching a cure for cancer?



> And this also leads to surfdom in that those who have, eventually have all.


100% wrong: the United States has an extremely high degree of income mobility, which is why the poor and and middle classes oppose tax increases as much as the rich: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/BG1418.cfm ; http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/wm556.cfm



> And those who do not, have to beg those who do for jobs, etc. This is why we're seeing such a widening gap of the rich and poor (and destruction of the middle class) in the States (and here as well in many cases). Total corporatism works off of this ideal.


Corporatism and Capitalism aren't them same thing: they are opposites.  Corporatism is an authoritarian: Laissez-faire Capitalism, by definition, is not.  The free market ensures a market-clearing wage, which _guarantees_ that there is always as many jobs as workers.



> What I am trying to get at is the basic ideals of libertarianism where you look after yourself and your family (through hard work), but expand that to include your neighborhood. My points are that community "health" (job oppurtunity, health, enviroment, etc) is more important to the whole then a single individual who has more then all those around them. Yes there will be those within the community with more then others, but so what. As long as each person is doing something for the health of the community (whatever that may be), it works. It is a shift in thinking. Nothing more. Is it utopian? Yes, but I would not want to see it go that far down that path, as its starts entering into dangerous ground. If we all thought this way, we would not necassarily need all the social programs because they would already be taken care of within (an by) the community. The only question is, how large a community (family unit on up) could this model support?


Yeah, sure: Cubans and North Koreans are still waiting for the "withering away of the state" ...



> Does this require social programs run by government? I don't know.


Actually, it would require violent repression of entrepreneurs and individualists. 



> My problem with the economic model that todays world (since Adam's introduction of such) seems to buy into is that it assumes that all resources are unending, and that absolutely everything is a resource. From human workers, to air, water, oil, gas, metals, to time, etc... And thus everything is for sale, and money can be made from it. Its wrong.


No it isn't.



> All things have an end.


Resource economics 101: as resources become more scarce they become more expensive.  Thus, the last "unit" of anything would cost $inifinity.  In real life, several things happen: increased (relative) cost increases the viability of technological development, which both decreases extraction costs and increases extractable reserves; moreover, alternative energy sources become more viable, decreasing the required usage (and thereby the reserve calculation).  More here: "We WIll Never Run Out of Oil" http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/run_out_of_oil.htm and here: http://www.abetterearth.org/subcategory.php/300.html

Have you heard of "The Wager"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wager_between_Julian_Simon_and_Paul_Ehrlich (the neo-Malthusians always lose, but never shut the heck up ... Rifkin is part of this crowd)


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## Zipper (28 Apr 2005)

I think you had better take a better look at the States and their health care. They have back logs as does everyone else. They are NOT a perfect system.

There is a reason most democratic countries are Social democracies. They happen to think that looking after their citizens instead of making a profit off of them is more important.

Case in point is the fact that their are many two income families down in the States as well. Its not something that only Canada or any social democracy is going through.

Is not any formal gathering of people self reliant on each other? Why did we form villages, towns, cities, in the first place? Everyone is reliant on each other for the well being of society. If not, then it is anarchy. Either that or we go back to the hunter gathering's of our ancestors. And you once again assumed that everyone is equal and able to be self reliant. They are not. There are those who cannot do what everyone else does and thus need assistance from the community. Whether that is social programs or those within the community helping them. 

As for those who support our system and those who do not. You have to treat everyone equal. You tax everyone, or you tax no one. You either have a government (federal, provincial, local), or you have none.



> 100% wrong: the United States has an extremely high degree of income mobility, which is why the poor and and middle classes oppose tax increases as much as the rich:



Holy crap. Your quoting the Heritage foundation? A ultra right wing think tank thats worse then you say Rifkin is. Good grief. People accually swallow them saying that the "poor" only stay poor for about 4 months except for 2%? C'mon. Tell that to the droves of poor in every major city in the States. Tell that to all the single mothers who have to work two jobs just to get by. Oh sorry. They fall outside statistics. If you believed them, then the States would have solved their poverty problem years ago. Yeah right.

Now for the economics class. 

We will never run out of oil? Oh good grief. What world do you live in? If a specics for one reason or another can become extinct? Why cannot a resource? It may not run our in your lifetime. But to say we will never run out of "usuable/affordable" oil is naive. Your just saying that prices (money) can be made at all times. Who cares. Its the resource I'm talking about, and not the money that can be made from it. Yes as oil becomes harder to extract and reserves become lower, then prices go up. Who cares. It is the fact that we use up absolutely everything for a price and that everything is charged that I have a problem with. 

How long before we cannot breath our own air and have to have it piped into our homes for a price? We already see it with water. We either drink it full of chemicals from our taps or we can buy it bottled and cleaned from the store. Whats with that? Economics shouldn't charge us for everything we do. Just like taxes shouldn't charge us for everything we do.

This is why I don't spout off numbers. Depending on who collects them, they'll be called "left" or "right" agendas. Unless their is a majority (vast majority) that accepts them, they mean nothing.


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## Justin Gladue (28 Apr 2005)

My name is Justin Gladue, and I am a civilian. I found this site by accident. I am posting in response to a_majoor's Monday, 4 April 2005 post. This will be my first and only post.

On Friday, April 21st, Jennifer Bowron and her husband, Mike Bonnard, buried their second child. I know this because they are friends of mine, for my part. As is Curtis Gifford, the young man pulled out of the basement. He will survive, but his prognosis is that he will spend the rest of his life with the mentality of a five year old.

I am posting this because I want a_majoor to make sure his facts are straight.  

http://sask.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=mother-fire050315

First, I would like to say you are right. There are precious few out there who are willing to live up to their personal responsibility of making this world a better place. Far too many are willing to say, "I've been wronged", and stop fighting the good fight.  And there is a disgusting amount of people out there just itching to point out the problems to "the professionals" for them to fix. After reading your post a_majoor, and taking your military career into consideration, I wonder where it is that you stand.

I need for you to understand clearly that there was no kids wandering around in an inferno. The house was asleep and remained that way. Jack Grover saw to that. (http://www.injusticebusters.com/04/Housing_Saskatoon.shtml ; http://www.injusticebusters.com/2003/slumlandlords.htm). Am I going to release Mike of the responsibility of seeing if the things in his own home worked? No, but I guarantee that he will never make the same mistake again. And I will not blame him for trusting others to do their F***ING JOB! Jack Grover is as guilty of murder as if he set that fire himself. Where was his pride in his work? His Respect for his fellow man? Should I berate Mike and Jen for not putting their personal safety at risk for their children? Sir, I have no children, and have not had to make that choice. God willing, I'll never never have to.

At this point, I have to point out what I consider the best part of your post. You say quite explicitly that that Mike walked away "unblemished". I assure you, there is not a single second of every day since then that he's not thinking, "What if i had woken up sooner?" or better yet,  "What if I hadn't woken up?"  Unblemished doesn't seem right. I'm not sure; I don't know what it's like to lose a child.

Do you?

Look, the real story is that this wasn't a rich family. There was a reason there lived in the slums. But they tried. They gave a damn. Mike turned his back on a meth addiction to take care of his family, and was showing promise of becoming the man I knew he would become.The one he still might, if this kid can recover from burying his kids. Lives were destroyed here. Are you getting my point yet?

Mike, Jen, Curtis, and William, are not victims. They are not martyrs for my cause. They are just friends of mine. They had a bad accident; a tragic but avoidable one. They are real PEOPLE, like you, like me.  You go ahead and applaud a man that makes a difference three seconds before death, if it helps you sleep at night. I'll help my friends shift through the ashes. 

Then again, you must know all this already. I gather this because you know them well enough to know that they didn't take a fire safety course. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here; I'd hate to believe you're some internet terrorist bent on fire bombing people you don't know to make a point.


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## Infanteer (28 Apr 2005)

Justin Gladue - don't target A Majoor with condemnation; reread the post that mentions your friends, it is an article post by Mr Majoor that was written by Mark Steyn.   

If you have an issue with the story, write Mr Steyn.


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## I_am_John_Galt (28 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> I think you had better take a better look at the States and their health care. They have back logs as does everyone else. They are NOT a perfect system.


They do not have backlogs anything like "everyone else"!



> There is a reason most democratic countries are Social democracies.


Yes, economic illiteracy and socialist propaganda.



> They happen to think that looking after their citizens instead of making a profit off of them is more important.


Ever heard of Adscam?  Cuba?  I suppose Chirac has never taken a kickback?  My God, let's try to keep this somewhere near them realm of reality!



> Case in point is the fact that their are many two income families down in the States as well. Its not something that only Canada or any social democracy is going through.


I suppose you are going to tell me that "the statistics" support this contention?



> Is not any formal gathering of people self reliant on each other? Why did we form villages, towns, cities, in the first place? Everyone is reliant on each other for the well being of society.


Because division of labour (specialization) is the most efficient means of creating wealth.  It is called comparative advantage (and explains why free trade is so beneficial).



> If not, then it is anarchy.


Interdependence still exists under anarchy: the two are not related.



> Either that or we go back to the hunter gathering's of our ancestors. And you once again assumed that everyone is equal and able to be self reliant. They are not. There are those who cannot do what everyone else does and thus need assistance from the community. Whether that is social programs or those within the community helping them.


Wrong again!  Everyone is not equal: that is the point.  Different people are better at different things: specialization produces the best possible outcome.  Cities and villages did not form because some politician said that this was the only way to improve lifestyles: social organization and interdependence come-about because trade allows wealth creation: leaving the milk production to the dairy farmers, rather than everyone having to get up to milk their own cow, allows the doctors to heal the sick.  This happened (and happens) naturally in the _absence of government_: all government does is create a less-efficient distribution of production, as well as overhead (when they aren't stealing outright).



> As for those who support our system and those who do not. You have to treat everyone equal. You tax everyone, or you tax no one.


Why would you force someone to support a system that works against their interest?  And even if you accept the (rather spurious) notion that you should, why wouldn't you tax everyone equally, rather than have those that benefit the least bear the greatest proportion of the burden?



> You either have a government (federal, provincial, local), or you have none.


There are vastly different forms of government: most people accept that government should be responsible for national defense, but why should there be public broadcasting?



> Holy crap. Your quoting the Heritage foundation?


Actually, I am quoting the same statistics they summarized in those articles.



> A ultra right wing think tank thats worse then you say Rifkin is. Good grief. People accually swallow them saying that the "poor" only stay poor for about 4 months except for 2%? C'mon. Tell that to the droves of poor in every major city in the States. Tell that to all the single mothers who have to work two jobs just to get by. Oh sorry. They fall outside statistics. If you believed them, then the States would have solved their poverty problem years ago. Yeah right.


Oh I get it: you are right and the statistics support your contentions.  But when checked, the statistics actually demonstrate that the opposite of what you claim is true: therefore the statistics are wrong.  No wonder were not getting anywhere.



> Now for the economics class.
> 
> We will never run out of oil?


Yes, it is a fallacy that doesn't immediately make intuitive sense, but is demonstrably true.  You think of reserves as a volume, but they are actually measured in time: the lower the rate at which we deplete reserves, the greater the reserves, _even when the total volume is decreasing_: the concept of scarcity ensures that usage rates will decline with _volume_, leaving total reserves unchanged (i.e., X years of oil).  And that doesn't even count more efficient extraction and refining or discovery of new reserves.



> Oh good grief. What world do you live in?


The one with the blue sky: and yours?



> If a specics for one reason or another can become extinct? Why cannot a resource?


Um, because commodities and 'species' are not the same thing: Buffalo may become extinct (little value) but pigs never will (unless we stop eating them).



> It may not run our in your lifetime. But to say we will never run out of "usuable/affordable" oil is naive.


No, it's been proven (The Wager).



> Your just saying that prices (money) can be made at all times. Who cares.


Well, you should because it explains your basic misunderstanding of Political Economy: economics deals with the creation of wealth and identification of value (in this case, scarcity increases relative value: think water in the desert or cigarrettes in prison), politics is only a means of redistributing wealth.



> Its the resource I'm talking about, and not the money that can be made from it.


But the money that can be made from it _is _the measure of it's value.



> Yes as oil becomes harder to extract and reserves become lower, then prices go up. Who cares.


You should, because it might become so costly that other means of energy production are more cost-effective.



> It is the fact that we use up absolutely everything for a price and that everything is charged that I have a problem with.


_Again_, I have to call bullshit: according to 'experts' like yourself, we're supposed to have run out of coal, oil, water, farmland and thousand other commodities several times-over.  You guys have been wrong every time: perhaps you should look at your assumptions.



> How long before we cannot breath our own air and have to have it piped into our homes for a price? We already see it with water. We either drink it full of chemicals from our taps or we can buy it bottled and cleaned from the store. Whats with that?


What's your point?  Politicians put fluoride in water: consumers demanded purer water, so the free market has responded where government could not (kinda like MRI machines).  People who buy spring water are getting screwed because they have to pay for everyone else's water, whether they want to or not.



> Economics shouldn't charge us for everything we do.


What?  Economics is a means to _understanding _the value of everything: it doesn't charge for anything.



> Just like taxes shouldn't charge us for everything we do.


Actually a consumption tax is probably the fairest and most efficient.



> This is why I don't spout off numbers. Depending on who collects them, they'll be called "left" or "right" agendas. Unless their is a majority (vast majority) that accepts them, they mean nothing.


Right, and the fact that the empirical evidence demonstrates that you are dead wrong is just a coincidence.


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## 48Highlander (28 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Ok, this is going to jump around a little.
> First. The basic tenant that you seem to be forgeting (whether it is cell compitition, or the strongest survive) is that modern society recognizes that ALL people are equal under the law.



But what does that have to do with taxation?  Or supporting anyone?  The law deals with criminal behaviour, it has nothing to say on wether the homeless guy on the corner should get my money or not.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> The society that you seem to buy into is that you everyone MUST work hard, get all they want, and to hell with everyone else. The problem with this is that those who have, have an easier time of having. While those who do not have, must work much harder to have. While this, in and of itself makes sense, and is the way it works for the most part. The problem I have is with those people who cannot have.



Like John said:  what?
Everyone can "have".  That's the whole idea behind a capitalist society.  You work for something, you get it.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> There are whole sections of society (handicapped, mentally ill, accidents, etc.) that need the opportunities to participate in order to be self sufficent within society. Your model would cast them aside and let them rot. Or even worse, make their futures dependant upon those who have, feeling that they would like to contribute something to help them.



Isn't that what you're suggesting?  By creating social programs at the expense of the taxpayer, are we not making these people dependant on "those who have"?  Or even worse, by taxing people to death, are we not creating EVEN MORE people who are dependant on the state?  $24,000 a year is enough for a person to survive somewhat comfortably, but not when they have to pay 40% of it on taxes.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> I am not advocating that only the weakest recieve help, or that we get rid of compation, nor that we have to all be upon some kind of false "level" playing field when it comes to income.
> 
> I am also not going to buy into the staunch individualism of libertarianism. This reliance upon the "goodwill" of those who have does not work as we all know that people are basically selfish bastards, and when left to their own devices will look after themselves only. And this also leads to surfdom in that those who have, eventually have all. And those who do not, have to beg those who do for jobs, etc. This is why we're seeing such a widening gap of the rich and poor (and destruction of the middle class) in the States (and here as well in many cases). Total corporatism works off of this ideal.



If people are selfish bastards, then how did these social program get created?  If what you're saying is true, then nobody would support social programs, we'd have lower taxes, and we'd all take care of ourselves.  Instead you've got homeless advocacy groups, and you have people raising money for everything from breast cancer research to saving the baby seals.  Peoples desire to help the "less fortiunate" is what causes excess taxation and misguided social programs.



			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> What I am trying to get at is the basic ideals of libertarianism where you look after yourself and your family (through hard work), but expand that to include your neighborhood. My points are that community "health" (job oppurtunity, health, enviroment, etc) is more important to the whole then a single individual who has more then all those around them. Yes there will be those within the community with more then others, but so what. As long as each person is doing something for the health of the community (whatever that may be), it works. It is a shift in thinking. Nothing more. Is it utopian? Yes, but I would not want to see it go that far down that path, as its starts entering into dangerous ground. If we all thought this way, we would not necassarily need all the social programs because they would already be taken care of within (an by) the community. The only question is, how large a community (family unit on up) could this model support?
> 
> Does this require social programs run by government? I don't know.
> 
> My problem with the economic model that todays world (since Adam's introduction of such) seems to buy into is that it assumes that all resources are unending, and that absolutely everything is a resource. From human workers, to air, water, oil, gas, metals, to time, etc... And thus everything is for sale, and money can be made from it. Its wrong. All things have an end.



As John pointed out, resources are only limited by human desire and ingenuity.  Assuming that we'll eventualy run out of everything is defeatist.  If we all thought that way, we might as well wipe eachother out right now because by your logic, wether we consume something at a slow rate or a fast rate, we'll eventualy run out anyway.  The only difference then is wether our race lasts a hundred years or a thousand.  That's not the way it works though, and it never has been.  Whenever we hit a hurdle, some cataclysm that makes it seem as if the world will end tomorrow, we "adapt and overcome".  We develop new technologies, new resources, new ways of thinking.  And that's another reason why a free capitalist society is important; it's much more adaptive.  In a capitalist society, free companies will always step in to fill the gap, and they'll do so a lot more quickly and efficiently than any government beurocracy.  This is one of the things I was trying to get at when I explained competition and cooperation.  In a natural society, competition and cooperation aren't two seperate things, they're the same.  For instance, you'll get companies competing against eachother to develop an alternate fuel source, and they'll do so out of pure self interest, but their competition will benefit all of society because it'll fuel the pace at which research is conducted, and it'll ensure we develop and refine a variety of new methods for producing fuel.  Whereas if the research is government directed, you end up with just one mediocre product.  In a communist society, or a socialist nanny state like you advocate, MOST solutions will need to come from the government.  There's a reason the USSR fell apart while the US prospered.


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## Brad Sallows (28 Apr 2005)

The economic argument against complete depletion of a particular resource is sound, but a sounder argument is technological.

Stop for a few minutes and think about the change witnessed by the oldest living generation - people born into a reasonably prosperous society and country (Canada) who for the first decades of their lives encountered the following novelties: water in (no more fetching water or pumping from a well), water out (no more backyard outhouse), water heaters (not over the top of a stove), gas- and electric-powered central heating (no more wood- or coal-burning appliances or central heating), widespread automobile use, radio, widespread telephony, grocery stores and supermarkets, etc.  Consider the change over their entire lives.  Consider how the pace of change has always been accelerating.  Now contrast the difference between what they had as children starting in, say, the 1920s, and what they have now.  Can you possibly predict or imagine what the acceleration of technological change will bring 20 or 30 or 40 or 60 years hence?

[Sidebar: we have always paid for water.  Whether we paid to dig one well, or a new well every few years, or "paid" in the time it took us to haul water from a source (necessitating we buy a draught animal and/or cart, or a vehicle, or merely buy food for the calories to haul it on our backs), whether we paid for periodic water quality testing or not at a lab (as do most if not all people drawing from wells today)...do you get my point?  One way or another, we "pay" for everything, including the very air we breathe if by no other means than the calories we must expend to draw breath.  Time=wealth.  Everything else, including money, is just a medium of exchange for time.  My life is finite, and every piece of my time transferred from my life to someone else's is irreplaceable.  I continue to wonder how I should feel about that.]

I expect oil will not run out because alternate energy sources will be developed.  When that happens the primary use of oil will be as lubricants and as an industrial chemical.  Possibly synthetic lubricants will completely replace the former; perhaps ultimately some new materials will replace the latter (eg. the use of petrochemicals in plastics superceded by some as yet unknown material).

There have been some examples we know of peoples depleting resources, but they are characterized by being fairly closed systems (eg. the Easter Islanders) or very finite resources.  Given current population growth trends, this planet alone might be regarded as an approximation of an infinite resource pool.  The solar system certainly should be.

The main purpose of governments right now seems to be to create employment (ie. government jobs, not fostering of private enterprises).  There is a limit to how much productivity can be transferred by fiat.  If the statists are fortunate, the ability of the private sector to produce things and services people want will outstrip the continued growth of the public sector which provides things and services regardless whether the demand is 100% of capacity.  I am skeptical.  Even though manufacturing productivity increases in Canada (and the US) apparently continue to outstrip manufacturing job losses to other countries, I believe we are approaching a singularity in a curve - we can't predict whether productivity will continue to pace or lead job movement to foreign countries as they increase the education levels of their work forces and develop their service sectors.


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## I_am_John_Galt (28 Apr 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> The economic argument against complete depletion of a particular resource is sound, but a sounder argument is technological.
> 
> Stop for a few minutes and think about the change witnessed by the oldest living generation - people born into a reasonably prosperous society and country (Canada) who for the first decades of their lives encountered the following novelties: water in (no more fetching water or pumping from a well), water out (no more backyard outhouse), water heaters (not over the top of a stove), gas- and electric-powered central heating (no more wood- or coal-burning appliances or central heating), widespread automobile use, radio, widespread telephony, grocery stores and supermarkets, etc.  Consider the change over their entire lives.  Consider how the pace of change has always been accelerating.  Now contrast the difference between what they had as children starting in, say, the 1920s, and what they have now.  Can you possibly predict or imagine what the acceleration of technological change will bring 20 or 30 or 40 or 60 years hence?



Excerpt from Michael Chricton lecture at Caltech (topic was global warming models, but the same point, nonetheless; http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html):



> Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?
> 
> But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS... None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what you are talking about.
> 
> ...





> [Sidebar: we have always paid for water.  Whether we paid to dig one well, or a new well every few years, or "paid" in the time it took us to haul water from a source (necessitating we buy a draught animal and/or cart, or a vehicle, or merely buy food for the calories to haul it on our backs), whether we paid for periodic water quality testing or not at a lab (as do most if not all people drawing from wells today)...do you get my point?  One way or another, we "pay" for everything, including the very air we breathe if by no other means than the calories we must expend to draw breath.  Time=wealth.  Everything else, including money, is just a medium of exchange for time.  My life is finite, and every piece of my time transferred from my life to someone else's is irreplaceable.  I continue to wonder how I should feel about that.]



Failure to acknowledge what you have just written might just be the one thing we should be concerned about: in order to ensure an infinite supply of clean air and water we _should _be paying for it _at the individual level_.  Otherwise, we risk the Tragedy of the Commons:



> Hardin uses the example of English Commons, shared plots of grassland used in the past by all livestock farmers in a village. Each farmer keeps adding more livestock to graze on the Commons, because it costs him nothing to do so. In a few years, the soil is depleted by overgrazing, the Commons becomes unusable, and the village perishes.
> 
> The cause of any tragedy of the commons is that when individuals use a public good, they do not bear the entire cost of their actions. If each seeks to maximize individual utility, he ignores the costs borne by others. This is an example of an externality. The best (non-cooperative) short-term strategy for an individual is to try to exploit more than his share of public resources. Assuming a majority of individuals follow this strategy, the theory goes, the public resource gets overexploited.
> 
> The tragedy of the commons is a source of intense controversy, precisely because it is unclear whether individuals will or will not always follow the overexploitation strategy in any given situation. However, experiments have indicated that* individuals do tend to behave in this way*.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_Commons


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## squealiox (28 Apr 2005)

All this gloating i seee earlier in the thread about europe's and canada's problems conveniently ignores one very large elephant sitting in the room.
That's the fact that at least some portion of the high US standard of living is borrowed, financed by foreign bond-holders who are hanging on to the world's reserve currency -- for now. But what do you think will happen when americans are no longer able to be net importers of cheap goods, thanks to their artificially strong dollar? Those cheap imports have been doing the US economy and standard of living a lot more good than any amount of protectionism ever could (that in itself should be a hard lesson for lefty anti-globalisation types out there, too, btw). And it's unsustainable.
When the US finally starts having to pay true market prices for their foreign inputs they just might see their lead in PPP-adjusted per-capita GDP start to slip away. The casualties (besides my own US dollar exposure ) could include their commitment to international trade and their distaste for government intervention. (It's happened before, in the 30s and to lesser degrees at other times too).
The moral of the story? There is never going to be a free-market utopia in this world, as long as there are electorates to please. And ayn rand can roll over in her grave all she wants. Over the long run, the closest any country can come to one is by funding a semi-generous social safety net (merely expensive) while refusing to subsidize, protect or overregulate any industries (expensive AND distorting). That will be the real lesson for the us, europe, canada and everyone else to take on board if they want to compete economically in the future, long term. Either that, or stop listening to those stupid voters...


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## Brad Sallows (28 Apr 2005)

I keep hearing about the impending US collapse.  I have yet to find a concise and persuasive answer as to what should really happen.  A trade imbalance is deemed bad if capital is exported in exchange for consumption.  I can't imagine why the US could not survive tightening its consumption.

Today I read someone, who presumably is thought knowledgeable in such matters, explaining the danger of the Chinese changing their US dollars for another currency.  Ok, but my question is: who in their right frigging mind, in light of all the doomcrying about the US economic situation, is going to be lining up to buy US dollars?


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## a_majoor (28 Apr 2005)

An alarming view by "Stratagypage". Lets hope the author is too pessimistic.

http://www.strategypage.com/onpoint/articles/2005427.asp



> *The Next Failed State*
> by Austin Bay
> April 27, 2005
> 
> ...



My own take on the separatists is to simply set the rules as follows: 

1.The question is "Do you wish to remain a Canadian Citizen, Yes or No?"
2. Any riding which has a super majorety (60%+, although I would go for 66% myself) is declared separated from Canada
3. Crown property in "separated" ridings would be claimed and removed, and a portion of the Federal Debt equal to the population of "Quebec" would be transferred to the "new" nation
4. The portions of former Quebec which voted to remain part of Canada would be administered as the Territory of Ungava, until the people of Ungava had a chance to organize their own legislature etc.

Relatively neat in principle, and it makes separation clean, balances the books, people who want to go can go, but people who want to stay can stay. The long term fall out is beyond my powers of prediction, but at least this idea breaks the endless deadlock once and for all. If Canada still unravels as in the above scenario, then perhaps our problems are far deeper than we want to admit.


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## squealiox (28 Apr 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> I keep hearing about the impending US collapse.   I have yet to find a concise and persuasive answer as to what should really happen.   A trade imbalance is deemed bad if capital is exported in exchange for consumption.   I can't imagine why the US could not survive tightening its consumption.
> 
> Today I read someone, who presumably is thought knowledgeable in such matters, explaining the danger of the Chinese changing their US dollars for another currency.   Ok, but my question is: who in their right frigging mind, in light of all the doomcrying about the US economic situation, is going to be lining up to buy US dollars?



no-one serious is predicting a us collapse. but there will be a correction, sooner or later. the only question is will it be a sudden crash or (hopefully) gradual. and if the asians (not just china) start unloading their us dollars, there'll be plenty of buyers -- at a deep discount. the dollar's current softness is probably pricing in the risk of that eventuality already.


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## 48Highlander (28 Apr 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> An alarming view by "Stratagypage". Lets hope the author is too pessimistic.
> 
> http://www.strategypage.com/onpoint/articles/2005427.asp
> 
> ...



Neat and impractical   And not to nitpick, but if we're going to offload a portion of our national debt on them, they should also get a portion of the "crown property" you spoke of.  I'm not a big fan of Quebec, but fair's fair.


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## Zipper (29 Apr 2005)

Ok, I think things got lost in all that economic crap somewhere.

First. I'm talking about people and their needs. Not money. Not economies. Not resources.

People are what are important in this country. Not how much the dollar is worth for their lives. I think in some ways I am agreeing with what Brad has said about the idea that their cannot be a total free market system. We need to find our own balance and not fall to a US model, nor to something too social in nature (we all saw what the NDP did to Ontario :). Damn, I wish I could explain myself better.  

Your right on many points Gault. The problem I see is that you are paying more attention to the economic side of things as opposed to the people who are being helped by the programs that are in place. Yes their are those who abuse it. Our government also abuses it at times. But then again so does every government in the world, including the US. I believe Enron (private sector) and the lack of any cases of mad cow (government) says a few things. But we cannot let people fall between the cracks without at least trying.

Also your right about Oil in that alternative energies will come up to replace them. However your economic model is flawed in that (as I said before) all things DO come to an end (on this planet). But then again, we may be building bases on the moon or in the astroid belt by then and may discover new fields there. I can only hope we do expand our alternative energy use quickly, or things will get even worse.

No there are no back logs for those who can afford to go to a hospital. But try being one of those who cannot and must fall back on the publicly funded health care down there. Good luck.

AMajoor - I have heard that theory before and say it is doomsaying. Never happen. Although will Canada last 1000 years? Who knows. As for Quebec. I agree. Good plan (although an oldie as well).

As for the States and their melt down. Well with their trade deficit and debt load, something is going to happen that won't be pretty. I doubt it will be a melt down so much as a slight crash. One thing that could hurt them bad is if OPEC decides to use another currency as the basis for oil. Although I agree with Squeal for the most part on that.


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## TCBF (29 Apr 2005)

"is if OPEC decides to use another currency as the basis for oil."

Interesting point, Zipper, as a lot of Islamic countries are beginning to seriously consider the Gold Dinar.  Imagine, paper money replaced by actual gold.  "Pay to the bearer on demand" indeed.


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## Infanteer (29 Apr 2005)

I personally feel that any vote on Quebec separation should be a matter for the entire country to decide.  "Quebec" - meaning the land within the province - does not belong to a specific ethnic group or anyone with a specific drivers license; it is Canada and it belongs to Canadians.  I can move to Quebec as a Canadian and someone from Quebec (regardless of mother tongue) can move to BC.


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## a_majoor (29 Apr 2005)

> Ok, I think things got lost in all that economic crap somewhere.
> 
> First. I'm talking about people and their needs. Not money. Not economies. Not resources.



*Economics* is the science which describes the activities people undertake to fulfill their wants and needs. Economies can exist in the absence of money (barter), with money having an innate value (gold coins), representing units of value (Copper ignots from Cyprus were in the shape of a stylized Ox skin in Mycenean times), or having value by fiat (today). 

*Money* is just a unit of exchange which allows people and economists to measure what is going on, the same way a meteorologist uses a temperature scale and barometric measurments to understand the weather.

If you want to talk about values of any sort, you need a system of measurement with some common standard (if I talk about things in terms  of dollars and you talk about the same thing in terms of colour intensity, then we are really pooched). So if we seem insensitive because we talk in terms of dollars and GDP, it is because "we" generally agree on that system of measurement.


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## I_am_John_Galt (29 Apr 2005)

squealiox said:
			
		

> All this gloating i seee earlier in the thread about europe's and canada's problems conveniently ignores one very large elephant sitting in the room.
> That's the fact that at least some portion of the high US standard of living is borrowed, financed by foreign bond-holders who are hanging on to the world's reserve currency -- for now. But what do you think will happen when americans are no longer able to be net importers of cheap goods, thanks to their artificially strong dollar? Those cheap imports have been doing the US economy and standard of living a lot more good than any amount of protectionism ever could (that in itself should be a hard lesson for lefty anti-globalisation types out there, too, btw). And it's unsustainable.
> When the US finally starts having to pay true market prices for their foreign inputs they just might see their lead in PPP-adjusted per-capita GDP start to slip away. The casualties (besides my own US dollar exposure ) could include their commitment to international trade and their distaste for government intervention. (It's happened before, in the 30s and to lesser degrees at other times too).



US has a much more manageable level of debt, relative to GDP: the fact that the US dollar is used as the international medium of exchange (and Reserve Currency) suggests that the US should be running trade deficit over time to remain in equilibrium.


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## I_am_John_Galt (29 Apr 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> *Money* is just a unit of exchange which allows people and economists to measure what is going on, the same way a meteorologist uses a temperature scale and barometric measurments to understand the weather.
> 
> If you want to talk about values of any sort, you need a system of measurement with some common standard (if I talk about things in terms  of dollars and you talk about the same thing in terms of colour intensity, then we are really pooched). So if we seem insensitive because we talk in terms of dollars and GDP, it is because "we" generally agree on that system of measurement.



Further to Mr. Majoor's point:

The meaning of wealth is often confused with money: wealth is an accumulation of utility, for which money is only a means of keeping score.

*Utility *is a measure of the happiness or satisfaction gained from a good or service and is entirely subjective: in this sense, money has value because it can be used to purchase other items which provide utility.  I go to Safeway and buy milk because I derive greater utility from the milk than the money I have to give Safeway in return for it.  Similarly, Safeway derives more utility from the money I pay them than from the milk they have given me in return.  We are both happier, as we both have something that we value more highly than what we had before: wealth has been _created_, and it is a win-win situation: free exchanges are never win-lose: at worst one party is neutral and the other wins (which is why, despite NDP propaganda to the contrary, you cannot "exploit" labour, except in the case of indentured servitude).

Utility accounts for charity, too: I am happier donating $100/year to cancer research, than for any other purpose.  It is a purely _selfish _action: I feel better about myself for having done it.

Money is really cool because it acts as a universal unit of exchange: I can get paid in money for any (valuable) work I do and can use that money to buy milk or anything else I want.


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## Infanteer (29 Apr 2005)

Econ 100 is rushing back to me now - gotta love the Lydians....


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## Cliff (29 Apr 2005)

If the majority of the people support democratic socialism = then Canada is not doomed = since they are getting what they asked for. I personally have no use for a busy-body state where micro-management of the individual is the norm.


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## a_majoor (29 Apr 2005)

> In regards to the capacity of an enemy to deliver a "knockout blow" in economic or demographically based areas, unwittingly or not, you have identified the main US technique of destabilising unfriendly regimes. Unfortunately, this is only effective against nations/economies with narrow bases - like only exporting one commodity. Canada is not a candidate for this. Our 13.4% of foreign born Canadians and diverse demography in almost all areas preclude the effectiveness of destabilising groups on the national scale as well.



Canada seems very diverse, but it is actually quite centralized both politically (as we see to our cost) and economically. Much of our industry is based on a rather narrow strip in SW Ontario, resources are concentrated in a few geographic areas (you don't drill for oil in Quebec, nor build huge Hydro projects in northern Alberta), media and banking is largely centred in Toronto...

Compounding the problem (for us) is the very narrow and brittle political structure we live with. Watching Mr Dithers deal with his self induced problems is bad enough, what would happen in a crisis situation? Feeding misleading data to the PMO, or simply overwhelming it with a flood of data would paralyze the government (as we are seeing with the Gomrey inquiry).

This suggests there are nodes which could be attacked or "levered" to disrupt Canada politically or economically. As a very small nation in the global economy, it would not take a potential enemy a great deal of resources to conduct this sort of 4GW operation, and as an added benefit, disrupting Canada would draw the attention of the United States, which is not too keen to see disruption on either border. While the Americans see to their northern border, some of their attention and resources become unavailable for other purposes.

This could be a very interesting topic.....


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## Canuck_25 (29 Apr 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> Canada seems very diverse, but it is actually quite centralized both politically (as we see to our cost) and economically. Much of our industry is based on a rather narrow strip in SW Ontario, resources are concentrated in a few geographic areas (you don't drill for oil in Quebec, nor build huge Hydro projects in northern Alberta), media and banking is largely centred in Toronto...
> 
> Compounding the problem (for us) is the very narrow and brittle political structure we live with. Watching Mr Dithers deal with his self induced problems is bad enough, what would happen in a crisis situation? Feeding misleading data to the PMO, or simply overwhelming it with a flood of data would paralyze the government (as we are seeing with the Gomrey inquiry).
> 
> ...



 You made your political view apparent in your first sentence, well done!


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## Brad Sallows (29 Apr 2005)

The Kyoto Accord is an example of economic warfare.  I think it was intended at the deepest level to retard the USA, but Canada obligingly signed on.  It is a mistake to concede any possibility of slowed economic growth or transfer of wealth in which not everyone participates to equal detriment.


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## GO!!! (29 Apr 2005)

a-majoor brought up a very good point, but was unfortunately incorrect in his reference to the lack of diversity in Canadian Industry. First of all, While Canada's is a natural resource based economy, with the appropriate spin offs, there are fourteen major (10 billion+$/year) natural resource sectors alone. Given the relative scarcity of many of these products - this on it's own would be a safely diverse economy. 

The idea that the major industrial centers are concentrated in SW Ontario was true, but is slightly dated now, with employment levels in places such as Windsor being propped up by the unions. Those jobs are being sourced in places like Mexico and India now, a trend common in the industrialised world as wages rise.

Having said all of this, Canadian entry into the Group of 8 was not granted just because we asked. It was granted because Canada is one of the 8 largest economies on the planet - period. Canada is a very wealthy nation in proportion to it's population, but is by no means a "small economy" by US standards or any other. 

Lets try to shake off this inferiority complex. Canada as a nation could do irreperable damage to China or any other developing nation on the economic level if sufficiently provoked. Simply the withdrawal of development aid and the cancellation of loans would collapse the Communists, who have insufficient cash resources to even hold out for a renogtiation. A default would damage their credit so badly so as to put economic growth at 1% or less for 5yrs plus. 

Economically, Canada and China are not comparable.

As for "leveraging" Canadian interests, could you provide a realistic example - I'm having trouble thinking of one.


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## squealiox (29 Apr 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> US has a much more manageable level of debt, relative to GDP: the fact that the US dollar is used as the international medium of exchange (and Reserve Currency) suggests that the US should be running trade deficit over time to remain in equilibrium.


that equilibrium would continue, too, if the dollar were to remain the only major currency that looks like a benchmark store of value to traders and monetary authorities. forex trading is as much about perceptions as fundamentals, and the dollar's value has increasingly been all out of proportion to the relative size of the us economy. but now that the euro has come into its own, the ground has shifted. central banks are slowly developing a taste for diversified reserve portfolios. it's happening already. the only question is will there be a tipping point to an ugly currency crisis, or an orderly retreat of the dollar.


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## 48Highlander (30 Apr 2005)

Cliff said:
			
		

> If the majority of the people support democratic socialism = then Canada is not doomed = since they are getting what they asked for. I personally have no use for a busy-body state where micro-management of the individual is the norm.



The majority of Germans initialy supported Hitler, but they still ended up "doomed".   People getting what they ask for does not equal people getting what they need.   A homeless guy may ask you for money, but if he uses that money to buy alcohol or drugs, he's actually worse off than if he hadn't gotten it.


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## TCBF (30 Apr 2005)

" but now that the euro has come into its own, the ground has shifted. central banks are slowly developing a taste for diversified reserve portfolios. it's happening already. the only question is will there be a tipping point to an ugly currency crisis, or an orderly retreat of the dollar."

Watch for Islamic countries gradually leaving the USD and going back to the gold Dinar.


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## Zipper (30 Apr 2005)

> which is why, despite NDP propaganda to the contrary, you cannot "exploit" labour, except in the case of indentured servitude



Not that I agree with the NDP for the most part. So I would guess that you think that it is alright that your boss asks for you to do a bunch of overtime shifts without paying you any extra for that work? And that it happens on a regular basis? Not supply you and your family with benefits (that are your choice to take or not)? Not give you any holiday time? Give you 10 minutes for lunch a day? And not supply you with a safe work enviroment?

Interesting.

As for the US trade deficit. If that were true that they "should" have one? Then why is it that they only entered into one in the early eighties (Regans time)? And I agree with what Squal is saying again. Good point.

And for the Islamic world heading for the Dinar. It would make things interesting if they demanded that their oil payments came in that form. However I think they are smarter then that, and would follow the rest of the world towards another "global" (electronic) currency, instead of heading back the world before WWI.



> People getting what they ask for does not equal people getting what they need.  A homeless guy may ask you for money, but if he uses that money to buy alcohol or drugs, he's actually worse off than if he hadn't gotten it.



Agreed. But are you going to make that choice for him? Or are you going to give him money? Buy him some food instead of giving him money? Point him in the direction of the nearest shelter (like you know where that is)? Or look at him funny and tell him "to get a job" as you hurry past?


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## TCBF (30 Apr 2005)

"payments came in that form. However I think they are smarter then that, and would follow the rest of the world towards another "global" (electronic) currency, instead of heading back the world before WWI."

The whole idea of establishing The Calphate is to take us all a lot further back than WW1.


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## squealiox (30 Apr 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> The Kyoto Accord is an example of economic warfare.   I think it was intended at the deepest level to retard the USA, but Canada obligingly signed on.   It is a mistake to concede any possibility of slowed economic growth or transfer of wealth in which not everyone participates to equal detriment.


and who are the dark forces behind this sinister plot?


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## Edward Campbell (30 Apr 2005)

squealiox said:
			
		

> and who are the dark forces behind this sinister plot?



The European Union: the most hostile (to North America) and most protectionist grouping on the planet.

Kyoto is so deeply flawed that it cannot have any serious environmental rationale - there must be some other _reason_ for it: economic warfare makes sense.


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## pbi (30 Apr 2005)

GO!!! said:
			
		

> a-majoor brought up a very good point, but was unfortunately incorrect in his reference to the lack of diversity in Canadian Industry....



GO: that was very good. Living in Winnipeg, which has low unemployment, steady (but slow...) growth and the second most diversified economic base in Canada (after London Ontario IIRC), I agree fully with your observation that our economic landscape is changing. Here in Manitoba, we are importing workers from Europe as fast as we can go to man the industries of the southern part of the province in places like Morden, Winkler and Altona, or just east of here in Steinbach. We also have massive hydroelectric capability and will soon be making lots more coin by selling it to Ontario and the US, further fuelling Manitoba's economy. Saskatoon is growing, and is developing itself as a high tech centre. 

We are no longer a nation of "hewers of wood and drawers of water" alone: most of us live in cities over 100,000 and work in some kind of service industry (again IIRC...)

Cheers


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## Andyboy (30 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Agreed. But are you going to make that choice for him? Or are you going to give him money? Buy him some food instead of giving him money? Point him in the direction of the nearest shelter (like you know where that is)? Or look at him funny and tell him "to get a job" as you hurry past?



You know what Zipper your bull is starting to stink this place up. Tell us St.Zipper, what do YOU do when you pass a homeless man? Living in Edmonton (edited from Toronto) you must pass street people several times everyday. I'd really like to hear what you do and how you think it helps them.


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## Andyboy (30 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Not that I agree with the NDP for the most part. So I would guess that you think that it is alright that your boss asks for you to do a bunch of overtime shifts without paying you any extra for that work? And that it happens on a regular basis? Not supply you and your family with benefits (that are your choice to take or not)? Not give you any holiday time? Give you 10 minutes for lunch a day? And not supply you with a safe work enviroment?



I'm afraid I have to raise the BS flag here. 

Labor laws against such practices notwithstanding  : the solution is to find another job and deny that employer your skill and knowledge. That employer is not obliged to employ you nor are you obliged to work for him. If he is taking advantage of you it is because you allow him to do so.

Do you have specific examples of such conditions existing or is this another "feeling" you get? If such conditions exist somewhere why haven't you reported it?


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## tomahawk6 (30 Apr 2005)

Austin Bay a respected military writer has ventured into a new field - prediciting Canada's future. Its thought provoking but very speculative. Here is the column:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20050428-095316-9424r


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## Zipper (30 Apr 2005)

TCBF said:
			
		

> The whole idea of establishing The Calphate is to take us all a lot further back than WW1.



Agreed. Pretty scary place.



			
				Andyboy said:
			
		

> You know what Zipper your bull is starting to stink this place up. Tell us St.Zipper, what do YOU do when you pass a homeless man? Living in Edmonton (edited from Toronto) you must pass street people several times everyday. I'd really like to hear what you do and how you think it helps them.



Funny how you didn't even answer the question? I wouldn't have posted those alternatives if I had not done all of them at one time in my life. Yes, I used to be a rigid thinker and judger of people and told them exactly what I thought they should do to solve their problems. Then I grew up and saw the real world for what it really is. And actually where I live in Edmonton (not 95st and 118 ave), I rarely see "street people". Although those times I have encountered them (usually in the parking lots of shopping areas) I have helped them as best I could, although rarely through money hands outs for the original reason above. Hardly a Saint, but treating them like a human being is always a start.



			
				Andyboy said:
			
		

> Labor laws against such practices notwithstanding   : the solution is to find another job and deny that employer your skill and knowledge. That employer is not obliged to employ you nor are you obliged to work for him. If he is taking advantage of you it is because you allow him to do so.
> 
> Do you have specific examples of such conditions existing or is this another "feeling" you get? If such conditions exist somewhere why haven't you reported it?



Actually and thankfully there are few to none of these places in Canada. And I agree with you that we can and should make those choices. But if you look around the world, there are many places where that choice is not an option. Shall I list? Or are you not aware of them already? Little hint. Try looking at the labels on your cloths, etc...


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## Andyboy (30 Apr 2005)

What is funny is your implication that if people don't choose to act in the way you believe is right then they wrong and bad. Pretty arrogant, Zipper but not unexpected. You've made a lot of insulting assumptions and insinuations in your posts without the burden of having to back any of it up and I'm getting tired of it.

What is also funny is the admission that you rarely "encounter" street people yet seem to have "them" all figured out. How many of "them"   did you "encounter" this week St.Zipper? Any? How about this month? Oops there I go with numbers again, sorry, we all know how you hate numbers. Not that it would really prove anything other than you are talking out your hat yet again. I live amongst some very poor people St.Zipper, don't presume to know me or what I stand for. 

Thanks for dropping by, have the best day ever!


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## Zipper (30 Apr 2005)

And you still haven't answered the original question!!

I'm not saying that people have to act any particular way. I'm just giving an alternative opinion to all (what I see as) the far right winged, individual first over all, ideology that is spouted here. If everyone here always agreed with one another and it was just a "I hate the government" blow off, then it would be a very boring place with very little to learn. People have different opinions, and those opinions can change to some degree when good arguments are presented and/or new ways of thinking come to light. God knows I've had a few changed here.

As for me "rarely" encountering street people anymore. It is because I (and my wife) have worked my(our) ass off so that we no longer live a neighborhood that they frequent. It doesn't mean I have never lived in such, or that I grew up around them. It is how I treat those people today when encountered that is important. Volunteering time at a food bank, church, etc are all good ways of helping them. But what is most important is to KNOW that they are PEOPLE who are working just as hard as I am in many cases (with what they have) to see their ways through life. And in many cases it is the opportunities (or lack there of) that they have received thoughtout their lives that have brought them to where they are today.

So I'm just saying that the callus attitude of "get a job" doesn't wash in almost ever case. If given the opportunity, they would not be there anymore then you or I.


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## TCBF (30 Apr 2005)

"So I'm just saying that the callus attitude of "get a job" doesn't wash in almost ever case. If given the opportunity, they would not be there anymore then you or I."

True.

So, lets tell our leaders to dump the political dogma, help those who CAN and WILL be helped, and stop flushing money on the rest, who are write-offs.   Keep them alive?  Yes.


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## Zipper (30 Apr 2005)

Agreed to a point again. :

The problem is, identifing who is who. Yes there are the obvious ones who are just milking the system and can be punted. But then it gets grey awefully fast...


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## Andyboy (30 Apr 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> And you still haven't answered the original question!!



And you still haven't gotten the point. I didn't answer the question because you aren't qualified to judge my actions. It is arrogant on your part to think that you are and even more arrogant to offer a list of things you've done as though they are some sort of yardstick by which we should all measure ourselves. Get over yourself, you don't have the answers, nobody does. The best thing we can do is judge for ourselves who we can help and who we can't and then act on it.


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## Infanteer (30 Apr 2005)

What in heavens are you guys arguing about - I'm lost....


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## GO!!! (30 Apr 2005)

a_majoor - I'm serious, can you please provide an example of economic leveraging being used to seriously harm Canada as a nation? The concept is interesting.


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## Zipper (30 Apr 2005)

Good question.

I think Andyboy here is protesting the fact that I made issue with someone (forget who now) making a point of "why should I give money to someone who doesn't work for it." or something along those lines about homeless people. And that I gave some examples of some things you could do instead of giving them money. Other then that. Don't know.

Otherwise.



> The best thing we can do is judge for ourselves who we can help and who we can't and then act on it.



Couldn't agree more. but then we wouldn't have anything to talk about around here... ;D


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## Andyboy (30 Apr 2005)

For the love of Pete you is slow.

Make your point all you like, that is your perogative. IS it too much to ask though for you to keep the sanctimonious holier-than-thou preaching to yourself? Some people don't agree with your point of view and I don't appreciate you demonizing them. 

Is that clear enough for you?


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## squealiox (30 Apr 2005)

TCBF said:
			
		

> " but now that the euro has come into its own, the ground has shifted. central banks are slowly developing a taste for diversified reserve portfolios. it's happening already. the only question is will there be a tipping point to an ugly currency crisis, or an orderly retreat of the dollar."
> 
> Watch for Islamic countries gradually leaving the USD and going back to the gold Dinar.



if the islamic countries want to bring their economies closer into line with their bronze-age political systems, then let them fill their boots. since the topic of this thread is societies that are "doomed", these guys are a prime example. they can price their oil in whatever quaint commodity they choose, but the real threat these morons will pose to us is, as ever, the physical damage they can inflict while they continue their inevitable decline.
(sort of like the old ussr)


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## Gunner (1 May 2005)

> Compounding the problem (for us) is the very narrow and brittle political structure we live with. Watching Mr Dithers deal with his self induced problems is bad enough, what would happen in a crisis situation? Feeding misleading data to the PMO, or simply overwhelming it with a flood of data would paralyze the government (as we are seeing with the Gomrey inquiry).



I think anyone who was involved with the Federal Government on 11 Sep 01 knows exactly what their capacity is to lead in an emergency.   It wasn't pretty at all...


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## TCBF (1 May 2005)

The old USSR is making an amazing comeback by selling suitcase bombs to the Islamo-fascists.

A 1kt mushroom cloud, coming soon to a city near you?


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## I_am_John_Galt (1 May 2005)

squealiox said:
			
		

> that equilibrium would continue, too, if the dollar were to remain the only major currency that looks like a benchmark store of value to traders and monetary authorities. forex trading is as much about perceptions as fundamentals, and the dollar's value has increasingly been all out of proportion to the relative size of the us economy. but now that the euro has come into its own, the ground has shifted. central banks are slowly developing a taste for diversified reserve portfolios. it's happening already. the only question is will there be a tipping point to an ugly currency crisis, or an orderly retreat of the dollar.



Won't happen: not in our lifetimes, anyway (barring something catastrophic which rendered the whole system moot).  The EU is in far too much disarray: what we've seen up to this point is wishful thinking, probably driven by naked discrimination (anti-Americanism) as much as anything else.  Simply won't happen.

Then again, if I had a crystal ball I wouldn't be wasting my time here, right?


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## 54/102 CEF (1 May 2005)

A weakness is auto parts exports - no need to leverage us - the Auto Makers will do all the damage - ie autos - if that ever goes to China - say bye bye to government programs - and bye bye to the big Canex

Frank Stronach of MAGNA was in the press this week saying that offshoring autoplants and parts is the beginning of a downward trend in the Canadian economic viability

Remember - the more exports of finished goods = more jobs = more tax $ for govt - in our case DND

Some extracts 

Does Security Trump Trade? 

The lack of a clear policy link for DND and Foreign Affairs (see Bland)[vii] means that an under equipped military, always hungry for sustainment funding just to keep the minimum of capabilities operational â â€œ could impact Canadians economically, but it would seem illogical as action against us would impact directly into 38 US states. Commentators today routinely forget that and concentrate on the need to improve our military capabilities to the exclusion of the economic link. A lively cottage industry has grown up saying we must do this or that in the strongest possible manner or there will be consequences are found today in many different media outlets. Notable sources are the CCS 21 website[viii] or that of the Conference of Defence Associations.[ix]. The failure of many of these well known commentators to integrate economics and pan-government policy, stopping where money stops rather than where money is generated in the economy seriously clouds considerations of issues of defence.  

Government revenue depends on the Canadian economy. The Conference Board of Canada suggests that there are several activities present that conspire against a greater Canadian presence in the world. One is our reliance on commodities[x] vs. home grown advanced production technologies (borne out in the note by David Crane about the Auto Industry), our record of deficit financing which is not yet far enough in the past to encourage foreign investment in Canada[xi], political uncertainty in Canada[xii] and a reliance on trade with the USA, which, they note, even though there is a Free Trade agreement, not all trade is free.[xiii] This includes disadvantageous high taxation and lower rates of innovation, i.e.: new things that Canadians ship to the world. These factors lead the Conference Board to suggest no real increase in government revenues for the next seven years.[xiv] The indirect deduction is no new programme funding in general for the government. The reduction of money coming into the government is countered by increased need for maintenance of older infrastructure and equipment for the forces. These reduce the means and the governmental freedom to commit assets externally in a timely manner.[xv]  The result is DND and External Affairs being progressively enmeshed in a vicious cycle that only real leadership can change. Continuation of the status quo â â€œ inside and outside DND will mean greater risk of something going wrong and leading to a loss of domestic and international prestige for the government. Our productivity is rated as 30% less than USA. With no clear definition of how to improve this - other than as I see it - an increase in an educated workforce, which will demand more innovation[xvi] John McCallum - when he was Chief Economist of the Royal Bank - suggests when you take out the heavy industry output of the USA our productivity is not that bad, yet he faces severe criticism with this approach. [xvii]   We need leadership from investment bankers rather than banking economists.

Read the whole story here - Just my ideas how Canadian Govt has backed us out of world affairs - or - we never got a critical mass going after WW2 - http://www.donlowconcrete.com/USA/

I get the impression that we need to hire Margaret Thatcher to come over here and clean out the rot. 

Freebies for all sorts of economic deadenders is a prescription for less influence in the world.

But thats just my opinion -


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## muskrat89 (1 May 2005)

Well, I can't speak for the Canadian economy, but my Company (in Arizona) is a Tier 2 automotive supplier. We are a metal stamping company. The automakers and Tier 1 suppliers are basically forcing many Tier 2 suppliers to go (source) overseas. We are having dies made in the Far East.  Our customers pressure us to do this. If we insisted on only using dies made in the US, we would simply not be able to bid competitively. Dies made in say, Korea or China are built faster, cheaper, and meet the same die standards as US ones.

To me, once companies start down that road, they are simply delaying the inevitable..


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## Edward Campbell (1 May 2005)

muskrat89 said:
			
		

> ... Dies made in say, Korea or China are built faster, cheaper, and meet the same die standards as US ones.
> 
> To me, once companies start down that road, they are simply delaying the inevitable..



Are you suggesting that your American and Canadian customers should be required to buy dies which are made more slowly and at higher cost?


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## muskrat89 (1 May 2005)

No Sir, not at all.  I am just pointing out that if we are buying the tooling there, it will probably only be a matter of time before our customer can buy the stampings there, based on the same economic principles.  There are also some underlying nuances of the automotive industry that were directing my thinking, but I didn't really feel comfortable discussing in the open forum - resulting in a post where I knew what I wanted to convey, but didn't do it very well. 

I guess, I was more referring to this statement:


> A weakness is auto parts exports - no need to leverage us - the Auto Makers will do all the damage - ie autos - if that ever goes to China



and was pointing out that many spinoffs of the auto industry are already going to China, unbeknownst to most consumers. Sorry for the jumbled posts..


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## Zipper (1 May 2005)

Andyboy said:
			
		

> Some people don't agree with your point of view and I don't appreciate you demonizing them.



I agree. But I think your comment should be more wide spread. I come up with my "opinions" because of the fact that all I see here is the demonizing of the terms "Liberal" and "Social", and so on. So it hardly me demonizing anyone who is not doing the same to others. We all have differing opinions and it is great that we can debate them here. Is that a bad thing? Or would you rather we all just agreed and b*tched about the same thing?

Squeal - I'm surprised you made that statement after your previous posts? Even if the Islamic nations "filled their boots", just that act alone would seriously harm the US economy. And I would argue that the Islamic nations are not in decline, although their are strong elements within them that wish exactly that. They are as much at war within their own society idealogically as they are with the "west".

And I will disagree with you Gault (big shock there eh?) in that I think the "potential" for a fall of the US market is very real right now. How it will pan out or as you say through your "crystal ball" is still anyones guess. If it is through the Euro or some other currency (China?) is hard to tell right now. People do not want to abandon their money making potential in the US, so I think it will take the US going further into the hole to really start foreign investors thinking about alternatives.

Who knows.


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## Andyboy (1 May 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> I agree. But I think your comment should be more wide spread. I come up with my "opinions" because of the fact that all I see here is the demonizing of the terms "Liberal" and "Social", and so on. So it hardly me demonizing anyone who is not doing the same to others. We all have differing opinions and it is great that we can debate them here. Is that a bad thing? Or would you rather we all just agreed and b*tched about the same thing?



Blaming other people for your inability to make a point is a cop out. If your point can't stand on it's own merits without resorting to insults, it may be time to reconsider your position.


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## 54/102 CEF (1 May 2005)

Here is Sherry Cooper`s Website http://sherrycooper.com/

In addition to being very easy on the eyes - she`s very brainy economic wise and has a lot of whats up with the Cdn economy on her site.


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## 54/102 CEF (1 May 2005)

put these words into a goodle search

sherry cooper "foreign direct investment"

And there is tons of stuff for your research --- watch out for hollowing out the economy --- which maywell be the economic leverage referred to earlier


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## 48Highlander (1 May 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> I agree. But I think your comment should be more wide spread. I come up with my "opinions" because of the fact that all I see here is the demonizing of the terms "Liberal" and "Social", and so on. So it hardly me demonizing anyone who is not doing the same to others.



Eh, not quite.  Nobody is "demonizing" the words "Liberal" or "Social".  First of all, you can't demonize a word, only an individual or a group, but that's besides the point.  We were discussing why communism and socialism are inherently flawed.  You on the other hand are sitting there implying that we're cheap, heartless bastards.  There's a big difference.  One is a logical debate about a concept, the other is an attack on the character of an individual.  I'm sure you see the difference.

Not to say that that's ALL you've done.  Certainly you have made some valid points and a few arguments that I'm sure, from your viewpoint, seem logical.  Just try to avoid making remarks, implied or otherwise, about the individual instead of their views.


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## squealiox (1 May 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> Won't happen: not in our lifetimes, anyway (barring something catastrophic which rendered the whole system moot).   The EU is in far too much disarray: what we've seen up to this point is wishful thinking, probably driven by naked discrimination (anti-Americanism) as much as anything else.   Simply won't happen.
> 
> Then again, if I had a crystal ball I wouldn't be wasting my time here, right?



the world's currency markets are driven by ideology? that's a new one on me ...


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## daniel h. (2 May 2005)

I'd argue Canada is very complicated, yet a few threats stand out:

1 - Canada has not yet had its two founding European groups acknowledged as the priority in Canada, leading soft Quebec nationalists and English Canadians to fear for the future culturally. Multiculturalism makes the future uncertain for everyone in cities like Toronto and Vancouve, Calgary. Edmonton, Montreal, etc...


2. Canada's business class has made quick fortuned selling out to U.S. and British interests over that last 100 years. This isn't recent. 

The problem with living under 2 different empires is it is much easier for Canada's business elite to get rich quickly by selling out, rather than developing our economy over the long term.


In other words, there has never been large amounts of value-added Canadian industry--only foreign-owned industry, with the exception of McGlaughlin, Massey-Harris and Studebaker in the past, and companies like Bombardier today.

Canada has no major defence companies, no Canadian car companies. That is where the money is.

Canada has over 40% foreign ownership, the U.S. has under 10%, Europe, Japan often under 6%.

Canada has over 50% foreign ownership in oil, over 50% in defence and 100% in the auto industry.


It would take long-term thinking, and opting out of "globalization", which would take sustained effort and committment to make Canada a major player with self-respect and no threats to our sovereignty, which NAFTA and and NAFTA+ trading block do threaten.


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## daniel h. (2 May 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> Styen should get in another word here:



www.bilderberg.org/2003.htm

Interestingly enough, Mark Steyn was invited by Conrad Black to attend a bilderberg meeting:
Bilderberg conference 2003: Versailles, Paris, France - Thursday 15th to Sunday 18th May 

MOD EDIT: This long list has already been posted on the board, removed due to length, is available through the link.


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## squealiox (2 May 2005)

daniel h. said:
			
		

> It would take long-term thinking, and opting out of "globalization", which would take sustained effort and committment



opting out of globalisation sure has done wonders for north korea. :
actually, canada's problem is not too much globalisation, it's problem is not enough globalisation -- we are too exposed to one single foreign market (can you guess which one?)


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## a_majoor (2 May 2005)

The US economy is subject to a lot of speculation, but here are some numbers so you, the reader, can see just what is possible with an "Ownership society" agenda. People can "talk the talk" about dumping bonds or convertintg to Euros and Dinars, but rational investors looking for a safe haven and high rates of return look for this:



> *Stagflation Nonsense*
> Inside the latest â Å“lacklusterâ ? GDP report.
> 
> Three months ago the first government estimate of gross domestic product for the fourth quarter of 2004 came in at 3.1 percent at an annual rate. At the time, the market consensus expected 3.5 percent growth. Immediately, the mainstream media started talking about an economic slowdown. *Turns out, that 3.1 percent was finally revised up to 3.8 percent*.
> ...


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## a_majoor (2 May 2005)

GO!!! said:
			
		

> a_majoor - I'm serious, can you please provide an example of economic leveraging being used to seriously harm Canada as a nation? The concept is interesting.



I should know better than to raise a point before going away for the weekend.....

The best "quick example" I can think of is the Banking system. Canada's banking system is concentrated with the "Big Five", who have been jockeying around to do a series of mergers to become the even bigger Four or Three. Leveraging against these banks can be done through manipulation of the currency or bond markets, George Soros made his billions by doing exactly that against the British Pound, wiping out the savings of millions of British pensioners in the process (talk about collateral damage). Since the banks are the source of funding and credit for most small business, finding ways to target a segment of business to make them less attractive to the banks might be a "bottom up" attack. If loans are called and business is forced into receivership, business in the same sector becomes more stressed and vulnerable. A cascading series of closures and bankruptcies could ensue. (BTW, there was a CISIS investigation of foreign influence on Canada's banking and political system called "Sidewinder" some years ago. http://www.telusplanet.net/public/mozuz/crime/lemieszewski20001102.html Articles 10,11 and 12 for some details, and http://www.canadafreepress.com/2005/cover012605.htm)

This may not seem like much, except that the underpinning of much "big" business is the sub-contracting to small business. A major sector like auto or energy might become disrupted because of a shortage of some supply or tool. If a particularly clever or ruthless operator was involved, they could then direct another "attack" against other sectors of the economy, creating a whipsaw effect and certainly overwhelming attempts by the government to intervene.

The best meta example I can think of is the Internet. It seems to be the ultimate in dispersion, yet "scale free" networks are vulnerable to certain types of attacks. IF you could discern the "geography" of the Internet, you would discover high traffic nodes or key sites like the DNS servers which, if taken down, would disrupt the Internet. Canada's high concentration of media, banking and financial services in Toronto certainly makes it an attractive target, particularly since these are the engines of the so called "knowledge" economy.


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## I_am_John_Galt (2 May 2005)

squealiox said:
			
		

> the world's currency markets are driven by ideology? that's a new one on me ...



The Europeans are pushing it really hard, but no-one else can figure out why they should hold Euros instead of Dollars: ironically, the Eurozone imports more oil than the US (tell that to Greenpeace) but the countries that export it have no interest in holding two currencies (except Chavez, who seems determined to sink Venezuela's economy into irrelevance, anyway).

The _reporting _of world markets (& events) is heavily driven by ideology.


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## 54/102 CEF (2 May 2005)

You mentioned  --- Canada's high concentration of media, banking and financial services in Toronto certainly makes it an attractive target, particularly since these are the engines of the so called "knowledge" economy.

I Add - Advertising Pirates in Montreal


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## Brad Sallows (2 May 2005)

>and who are the dark forces behind this sinister plot?

The people who negotiate these agreements are not stupid.  They can do the arithmetic.  The actual lack of benefit is easy to show - and has been shown - as can be shown where the economic impacts will be felt.  It's not some dark and sinister plot; governments and organizations are constantly jockeying for advantage.

If our goal is to reduce emissions, let's spend money to reduce emissions here in Canada.  Decide what's important to us, set our own targets, and spend our own money on ourselves.  If the Russians aren't polluting "their share" yet, good for them.  Let them worry about growing to fill their share, and we'll worry about reducing ours instead of just ignoring it by shovelling dollars overseas.


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## squealiox (2 May 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> The people who negotiate these agreements are not stupid.   They can do the arithmetic.   The actual lack of benefit is easy to show - and has been shown - as can be shown where the economic impacts will be felt.   It's not some dark and sinister plot; governments and organizations are constantly jockeying for advantage.
> 
> If our goal is to reduce emissions, let's spend money to reduce emissions here in Canada.   Decide what's important to us, set our own targets, and spend our own money on ourselves.   If the Russians aren't polluting "their share" yet, good for them.   Let them worry about growing to fill their share, and we'll worry about reducing ours instead of just ignoring it by shovelling dollars overseas.


do you really believe japan, europe and canada all decided to get together and sabotage their most important export market? with the blessing of the clinton administration at the time? that the most of the world's climate scientists are engaged in some giant hoax?

actually a lot of the examples of so-called "economic warfare" i see on this thread look more like "doing business" from where i'm standing. currency manipulation? foreign ownership? outsourcing? that's competitive markets for you. people get hurt. life sucks.

even kyoto contains a few sound market principles -- emissions trading -- that might just make it worth the effort. 

the real economic warfare that should be worrying us would be physical terrorist attacks on vulnerable infrastructure, like refineries or ports, for example. or industrial sabotage.


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (2 May 2005)

squealiox said:
			
		

> that the most of the world's climate scientists are engaged in some giant hoax?





> *Two of the world's leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming. *
> 
> A British authority on natural catastrophes who disputed whether climatologists really agree that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, says his work was rejected by the American publication, Science, on the flimsiest of grounds.
> 
> ...


 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wglob01.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/01/ixworld.html

Kyoto is about economics, not environment.


----------



## Brad Sallows (2 May 2005)

What is sound about trading emissions?  We, who produce emissions, hand over a lump of money to a country that does not, because it has not the industry to do so.  This reduces overall emissions in Canada by zero.  This invests, toward reduction of emissions in Canada, zero.  This reduces emissions, in the recipient country, by zero.  Unless the recipient nation is extremely enlightened, it invests toward reduction of emissions in the recipient nation, zero.  Assuming the payments are not absorbed by a corrupt leadership, in all likelihood they end up invested in enterprises which produce _more_ emissions.

Sounds like a real winner to me.  Not an ounce of international welfare (or economic warfare if you prefer) in that, oh no.


----------



## CupFrantic (2 May 2005)

Did anyone see the issue Maclean's in I believe March, which talked about the USA economic situation. All I will say is scary, the USA debt and budget deficits are massive . If their economy fails, it won't just damage Canada but probably destroy our nation  It is time to diverse our trading partners


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse (3 May 2005)

...and your plan is?.........


----------



## Zipper (3 May 2005)

Just a couple of sites. Nothing doom saying or anything, but a counter point.

http://www.brookings.edu/views/articles/20041201orszaggale.htm

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3430565.stm

That last one is a look at it from outside the States, which is always a breath of fresh air.

Nothing alarmist.


----------



## a_majoor (3 May 2005)

This seems to have been side tracked a bit.

The ideas of the "normal way of doing business" are correct, people do make trades on the currency and bond markets. What makes "economic warfare" possible is manipulating normal economic activity in such a manner as to cause negative consequences to the "enemy" party.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, a huge amount of government debt (Federal and Provincial) was denominated in USD, since the Canadian market could not absorb that amount of government borrowing. An unfriendly power could assemble these bonds into its own portfolio, and dump them at an inopportune time (for us), triggering a currency or interest rate crisis in Canada. Although there is also a negative cost for the unfriendly power (spending billions or hundreds of billions of dollars for no return), it may accomplish a goal of destabilizing Canada, paralizing the government or at least drawing the attention of Canada (and presumabley the United States as well) away from something else, without resorting to armed conflict.


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (3 May 2005)

The US numbers are huge, but that's because their econonmy is huge ... articles (and people) that talk about raw size are scare-mongering (or don't know what they are talking about) ... if the US's debt burden was anything like, say, Canada's, I would start to get concerned (Debt/GDP: USA - 62.4%; Canada - 77%).


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (3 May 2005)

September 16, 1992: billionaire _philanthropist _ George Soros wipes-out many British pensioners' life savings ...


----------



## 54/102 CEF (3 May 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> This seems to have been side tracked a bit.
> 
> The ideas of the "normal way of doing business" are correct, people do make trades on the currency and bond markets. What makes "economic warfare" possible is manipulating normal economic activity in such a manner as to cause negative consequences to the "enemy" party.
> 
> During the late 1980s and early 1990s, a huge amount of government debt (Federal and Provincial) was denominated in USD......



I think you have found the enemy and he is us  - and the elected economic terrorists that run this country. 

We have a way to take them out and it comes on average - every 4 years.

But we don't - not because we don;t vote against the current party - but that there are sufficient willing idiots - (a term from mid 30s propaganda studies) - to vote them back in - time after time.


----------



## squealiox (3 May 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> What is sound about trading emissions?   We, who produce emissions, hand over a lump of money to a country that does not, because it has not the industry to do so.   This reduces overall emissions in Canada by zero.   This invests, toward reduction of emissions in Canada, zero.   This reduces emissions, in the recipient country, by zero.   Unless the recipient nation is extremely enlightened, it invests toward reduction of emissions in the recipient nation, zero.   Assuming the payments are not absorbed by a corrupt leadership, in all likelihood they end up invested in enterprises which produce _more_ emissions.
> 
> Sounds like a real winner to me.   Not an ounce of international welfare (or economic warfare if you prefer) in that, oh no.



under kyoto, countries don't "hand over" anything. COMPANIES buy and sell emission credits. this gives them an incentive to lower emissions. The main point of contention (and the US's stated reason for dropping out of the treaty) is disagreement over how to initially divvy up a finite number of credits among countries.

The goal appears to be the creation of an international market in what has thus far been a public good (ie clean air) that was previously not assigned an economic value. There are many successful examples of national markets for public goods (such as acid rain emission credits in the US) within countries.

a sophisticated commodities-type market in emissions is by far the best solution to the problem. but markets have to be brought into existence before they can do their work.


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (4 May 2005)

squealiox said:
			
		

> under kyoto, countries don't "hand over" anything. COMPANIES buy and sell emission credits. this gives them an incentive to lower emissions. The main point of contention (and the US's stated reason for dropping out of the treaty) is disagreement over how to initially divvy up a finite number of credits among countries.


Yes, and rather than spending on research (and means) on ways to reduce pollution it is instead paid as an economic rent: it reduces profit, not pollution.  This is underscored by the fact that the notion that global warming is caused by human activity is very debateable.



> The goal appears to be the creation of an international market in what has thus far been a public good (ie clean air) that was previously not assigned an economic value.


The goal is to transfer wealth from more developed countries to less-developed countries under the aupicies of some international authority without any trade.  A secondary goal is to try to force some countries (particularly the US) to accede to 'internatonal institutions' (i.e., european socialists).



> There are many successful examples of national markets for public goods (such as acid rain emission credits in the US) within countries.
> 
> a sophisticated commodities-type market in emissions is by far the best solution to the problem. but markets have to be brought into existence before they can do their work.


It depends on what the goal is ...


----------



## a_majoor (4 May 2005)

If you think the raw numbers are scary and wonder why the US is less concerned, just look at the raw numbers of US economic growth, averaging @ 3.8% per quarter (and by editing out imports and govvernment spending, the core rate of growth is almost 5%). Compound interest means the absolute size of the US economy will increase even faster than ever (and of course each period includes the culmulative growth of the periods before.) Consider also:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/mcquillan200505040802.asp


> If each state reduced its taxes, rules, and regulations to the level of Kansas â â€ the most economically free state in the nation according to the U.S. Economic Freedom Index â â€ personal incomes would rise an average of $1,161 a year, or 4.42 percent. *If that were invested in the stock market over a 40-year working life at the historic return, a typical working American would have an additional $268,000 in his or her pocket at retirement.* And since he or she is unlikely to spend that money all at once, there could be some remaining for heirs.



So IF we were willing to throw off the shackles of socialism, then Canadians could  achieve their goals with their own resources.


----------



## Cliff (4 May 2005)

48Highlander said:
			
		

> The majority of Germans initialy supported Hitler, but they still ended up "doomed".



Comparing Canada to Hitler's doomed Germany seems somewhat extreme. Most Cdns seem happy with the evolving state of democratic socialism. I'm sure in their their collective mind, they don't see Canada as doomed. That was the point I was trying to make = nothing else.


----------



## Brad Sallows (4 May 2005)

If clean air is an economic good, then all we need to do is levy something analogous to stumpage fees on pollutants (whether air, water, or otherwise borne).  Encouraging rent-seeking won't discourage pollution as readily.


----------



## Zartan (5 May 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> The US numbers are huge, but that's because their econonmy is huge ... articles (and people) that talk about raw size are scare-mongering (or don't know what they are talking about) ... if the US's debt burden was anything like, say, Canada's, I would start to get concerned (Debt/GDP: USA - 62.4%; Canada - 77%).


Methinks then you should be concerned. Your figures are out of date by about 15 years. As of now, the Canadian national debt stands at just under CDN$500 Billion, for a total of roughly 40% of GDP. Compare this to the United States, now, where federal debt alone stands at US$7.7 TRILLION(!), to comprise roughly 75% of GDP. Not only that, but they have estimated their next  budget deficit at US$424 Billion, and this does not include emergency spending, military expenditures and the cost of the President's Social Service reforms, which are expected to cost the US $800 Billion dollars (over the next number of years). The one good thing for the US is that their government pays a (far) lower interest rate on  their debt, so their debt will expand slower.


----------



## a_majoor (5 May 2005)

Zartan said:
			
		

> Methinks then you should be concerned. Your figures are out of date by about 15 years. As of now, the Canadian national debt stands at just under CDN$500 Billion, for a total of roughly 40% of GDP. Compare this to the United States, now, where federal debt alone stands at US$7.7 TRILLION(!), to comprise roughly 75% of GDP. Not only that, but they have estimated their next  budget deficit at US$424 Billion, and this does not include emergency spending, military expenditures and the cost of the President's Social Service reforms, which are expected to cost the US $800 Billion dollars (over the next number of years). The one good thing for the US is that their government pays a (far) lower interest rate on  their debt, so their debt will expand slower.



Zartan, the tax cuts are having their effect (even if the Washington Post is loath to admit any good news about the Bush administration):



> washingtonpost.com
> *Tax Receipts Exceed Treasury Predictions*
> Early Surge Lowers Deficit Projections
> 
> ...



Mike Harris also raked in record tax revenues after the Ontario tax cuts, but unfortunately didn't cut spending by any appreciable amount. The structural problems of an aging population will continue no matter what government is in office either in Canada or the United States, so freeing the economy to generate more wealth (rather than feeding it to Liberal Friendly companies) is what is needed to support the aging populations in the long term.


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (5 May 2005)

Zartan said:
			
		

> the United States, now, where federal debt alone stands at US$7.7 TRILLION(!), to comprise roughly 75% of GDP.



US$7.7 TRILLION(!) divided by US$12.3MMMM (er, TRILLION(!)

Equals

.641666 (or 64.2% ... my earlier figure was 62.4%, so sue me, still nowhere near 75%)


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (5 May 2005)

Zartan said:
			
		

> Methinks then you should be concerned. Your figures are out of date by about 15 years. As of now, the Canadian national debt stands at just under CDN$500 Billion, for a total of roughly 40% of GDP. Compare this to the United States, now, where federal debt alone stands at US$7.7 TRILLION(!), to comprise roughly 75% of GDP. Not only that, but they have estimated their next  budget deficit at US$424 Billion, and this does not include emergency spending, military expenditures and the cost of the President's Social Service reforms, which are expected to cost the US $800 Billion dollars (over the next number of years). The one good thing for the US is that their government pays a (far) lower interest rate on  their debt, so their debt will expand slower.



More up-to-date OECD data: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/51/2483816.xls

"General Government Gross Financial Liabilities - Percent of Nominal GDP"
2004 column - Canada 70.6%; United States 63.5%
(1989 column - Canada 72.3%; United States 65.1%)

FWIW, the Government of Canada shows the Gross Debt at $701 Billion: it hasn't been $500 Billion in, uh, about 15 years (1990-91) ... are you trying to compare Canada's Accumulated Deficit with the US's Gross Debt?  http://www.fin.gc.ca/frt/2004/frt04_3e.html#Table15


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## squealiox (5 May 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> Yes, and rather than spending on research (and means) on ways to reduce pollution it is instead paid as an economic rent: it reduces profit, not pollution.   This is underscored by the fact that the notion that global warming is caused by human activity is very debateable.
> The goal is to transfer wealth from more developed countries to less-developed countries under the aupicies of some international authority without any trade.   A secondary goal is to try to force some countries (particularly the US) to accede to 'internatonal institutions' (i.e., european socialists).
> It depends on what the goal is ...



and the incentive now to invest in all this R&D is ... what, exactly? a nice warm fuzzy feeling for having done good? the ability to sell off emission credits would allow innovative companies to claim a true "economic rent" (ie, a return beyond their cost of capital) until their competitors find a way to catch up.

it's called "marketising an externality", just like the auctioning of bandwidth or hunting licences. Only this would be an intl market primarily between private entities and hence have greater liquidity. and btw, it's not a concept that is very popular with socialists, environmental ideologues or their soulmates on the american far right, either.

as for the scientific claims, the balance of the reported evidence would seem to suggest the problem is real. The climatology work is pretty hard to ignore. Here's what that notorious commie rag* The Financial Times has to say:
(*-sarcasm)



> US scientists say man has caused global warming and warn over the Gulf Stream.
> 
> By CLIVE COOKSON
> 475 words
> ...


----------



## Nemo888 (5 May 2005)

Forcing scientists, economists and beaureaucrats to work together, no wonder Kyoto blows.

Soldiers would do no better. My political skills are best described as a toolbox with only a hammer inside.

But its a darn good hammer STFU!


----------



## a_majoor (5 May 2005)

OK so this is turning into the Global Warming thread.

Some points to consider:

Global climate has fluctuated throughout history, and even in human history there have been periods of global cooling (which may have ended the Bronze age civilizations of Eygpt, Mycenea and the Hittites), global warming (which made Greenland, well, green, for Viking farmers), the "Little Ice Age" from the late 1600s to the early 1800s (which may have been a contributing factor to the Industreal Revolution) and so on.

I have serious doubts that anyone can claim the Myceneans, Vikings or Georgian Britons could affect the global climate, and indeed, there are reasons to believe this is beyond the capabilities of human civilization even today (a volcanic eruption can put an amount of particulate matter into the upper atmosphere equal to the entire year's output of all the industry on Earth, as a very simple example).

The idea that people are manipulating the science of climatology for political ends is only novel in the sense that climatology is the newest science being targeted, other things like the "Treaty of the Sea" which placed sea bed resources as "the common heritage of mankind" were explicitly designed to remove the profit motive from undersea mining and prevent the Americans from accessing these resources on their own. Once Global Warming has been proven to be caused by an increase in the Sun's brightness or some other equally natural cause, I'm sure the global busybodies will think of another means of attacking the American or Western economy.


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (6 May 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> and the incentive now to invest in all this R&D is ... what, exactly?


If you are willing to may more for an otherwise-identical product that was produced using reduced emissions, then go ahead and fill your boots.



> a nice warm fuzzy feeling for having done good? the ability to sell off emission credits would allow innovative companies to claim a true "economic rent" (ie, a return beyond their cost of capital) until their competitors find a way to catch up.


Well, actually Kyoto is an agreement between sovereign nations, not corporations.  Emissions credits might be traded between companies, but there is no mechanism to do this.  The United States has proven that it's economy is sufficiently diverse and robust to trade emissions credits internally (Clean Air Act) and reduce pollution: why would they willingly kowtow to some other international authority?  What do you think the motivations of this international authority might be?  Given the difficulty in getting European countries to respect their existing treaty obligations, even amongst themselves (EMU SGP comes to mind), it seems almost a certainty that this is merely a club to be wielded against the United States but ignored under any other circumstance.  The fact that ALL of the EU members (except the UK and Sweden) are on track to miss their Kyoto targets (in some cases by huge margins) while criticism remains focused on the US's failure to ratify, lends even more credence to this contention.



> it's called "marketising an externality", just like the auctioning of bandwidth or hunting licences. Only this would be an intl market primarily between private entities and hence have greater liquidity. and btw, it's not a concept that is very popular with socialists, environmental ideologues or their soulmates on the american far right, either.


I've never heard of that: it is simply a means of rationing a public good (clean air).  It is the Tragedy of the Commons (which I think I just mentioned elsewhere), but the solution depends on the co-operation of all of the participants (basically the Prisoner's Dilemma in game theory).  In practice, the United States is 99% certain that the EU countries will cheat, given their records and their motivations.



> as for the scientific claims, the balance of the reported evidence would seem to suggest the problem is real. The climatology work is pretty hard to ignore. Here's what that notorious commie rag* The Financial Times has to say:
> (*-sarcasm)


Yeah sure, and 10 years from now when we haven't all been incinerated, they are going to 'discover' that that it actually a normal occurrence (much like El Nino was supposedly proof of Global Warming at one point, too).  Face it, they come up with a different smoking gun every six months: so far none of them have convinced anyone but the (already) true believers.

The fact of the matter is that the _only _thing scientists and statisticians agree-upon is that we really can't make accurate models of weather or climate: check out Chaos, by James Gleick for some (accessible) background into the difficulties in modelling weather vis-a-vis Chaos Theory.



> *All I Really Need to Know I Learned In High School Science*
> 
> My high-school had one of the best science departments imaginable. Probably 4 of my top 5 teachers in my life were in that department. There was one lesson we had in 9th grade I wish everyone would have had. I genuinely think it would change the world.
> 
> ...


  it goes on ... http://wizbangblog.com/archives/005115.php


----------



## squealiox (7 May 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> Well, actually Kyoto is an agreement between sovereign nations, not corporations.   Emissions credits might be traded between companies, but there is no mechanism to do this.


oh really? tell that to the international petroleum exchange in london, which is already trading in futures contracts. not to mention the hedge funds:



> Is Emissions Trading the Next Hot Hedge Fund Strategy?
> 
> Chidem Kurdas, New York Bureau Chief
> 529 words
> ...



i have no idea what the us govt thinks about the rest of the world's "true motives" here (you'll have to ask mr bush about that one, not me), but the markets have already started to put their bets on the table anyway ...


----------



## 48Highlander (8 May 2005)

gotta love creative statistics  ;D


----------



## a_majoor (9 May 2005)

Socialists insist we can "have it all" if we simply submit to having more wealth confiscated to fund their schemes, but to create more wealth, we need an unburdened economy. If the economy is unburdened, it seems to me the people creating the wealth would not sit still for confiscation, however. Here is a discussion about capital formation and flow with some historical examples:



> The Two Faces of Paul Craig Roberts
> Years ago he got tax cuts right, but he's all wrong on â Å“outsourcingâ ? today.
> 
> By John Tamny
> ...


----------



## Cdn Blackshirt (9 May 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> More up-to-date OECD data: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/51/2483816.xls
> 
> "General Government Gross Financial Liabilities - Percent of Nominal GDP"
> 2004 column - Canada 70.6%; United States 63.5%
> ...



Just to elaborate on John's point, you have to recognize the huge difference in the different measures of "debt".

"Gross Debt" = "Market Debt" (bonds and treasuries) + "Non-Market Debt" (In Canada's case, unfunded pension liabilities)
"Net Debt" = "Gross Debt" - "Financial Assets" (Mix of cash, securities and loans - as long as we don't write them off!!!)
"Federal Debt" = "Net Debt" - "Non-Financial Assets" (Buildings, Land, etc.)

[note - the US debt measure is their Gross Debt.  They do not use the term "Federal Debt" which may be a Canadian invention so the relevant comparison is $700.1 million CAD to $7,700 million USD]

In any case, in monetary terms it looked liked this as of March 31, 2003:

Market Debt ($439.8 billion)
[visualize a plus sign here]
Non-Market Debt ($260.4 billion)
=
Gross Debt ($700.1 billion)
- 
Financial Assets ($135.3 billion)
=
Net Debt ($564.8 billion)
-
Non-Financial Assets ($54.2 billion)
=
Federal Debt ($510.6 billion)

I think we've now paid down an additional $9 billion since this time....


One additional note.  I was watching ROBtv on Friday night and they were interviewing Criag Russell who is a Foreign Exchange Analyst from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.  The hosts asked him a question based on how the media portrays things which was: "So is the possiblity of an election what is causing the fall in the Canadian Dollar."  His response: "No not all.  The fear is that your Prime Minister, Paul Martin in a bid to stay in power will make concessions to the left and undermined the fiscal stability of your country.  And if you look at each and every fall in your dollar it was related to a specific unwise politically driven handout."  To say the hosts were surprised by this response was was an understatement.  In short, be careful of the media assigning cause & effect.


Almost forgot, he also mentioned Paul Martin is destroying his international credibility based on what he is doing right now....




Matthew.


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (9 May 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> oh really? tell that to the international petroleum exchange in london, which is already trading in futures contracts. not to mention the hedge funds:
> 
> i have no idea what the us govt thinks about the rest of the world's "true motives" here (you'll have to ask mr bush about that one, not me), but the markets have already started to put their bets on the table anyway ...



You would think that if the Europeans had any intention of implementing Kyoto (i.e., holding themselves accountable) they would actually be involved in this: this is just proof that there is no mechanism to make it happen.  Funny how it is left to the Americans to try to make it work (does the League of Nations mean anything to you?).


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (9 May 2005)

This is interesting, too:



> *Kyoto Protocol--Propaganda or Censorship?*
> by Garth Pritchard, Canadafreepress.com
> Saturday, May 7, 2005
> 
> ...


http://canadafreepress.com/2005/cover050705.htm


----------



## squealiox (9 May 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> You would think that if the Europeans had any intention of implementing Kyoto (i.e., holding themselves accountable) they would actually be involved in this: this is just proof that there is no mechanism to make it happen.   Funny how it is left to the Americans to try to make it work (does the League of Nations mean anything to you?).


not sure what your point is. it is exactly because the europeans (and the japanese and canadians, etc) are "involved in this" that the major houses see value in emissions credits, while the americans sit on the sidelines. end of story.


> Morgan Stanley Expands Carbon Emissions Trading Desk
> 
> 266 words
> 9 May 2005
> ...


----------



## squealiox (9 May 2005)

Cdn Blackshirt said:
			
		

> Just to elaborate on John's point, you have to recognize the huge difference in the different measures of "debt".
> 
> "Gross Debt" = "Market Debt" (bonds and treasuries) + "Non-Market Debt" (In Canada's case, unfunded pension liabilities)
> "Net Debt" = "Gross Debt" - "Financial Assets" (Mix of cash, securities and loans - as long as we don't write them off!!!)
> "Federal Debt" = "Net Debt" - "Non-Financial Assets" (Buildings, Land, etc.)



funny you should mention that. canada's debt is nothing to sneeze at, but the data john posted clearly shows the canadian government's NET liabilities at around 28% in 2005, and falling, while that of the us is at about 46% -- up there with france -- and rising. if the us govt wasn't republican, i'd almost think they were being ...(gasp!) fiscally irresponsible.


----------



## Zartan (10 May 2005)

Sorry.
But creative statistics? Hear me out!
While I was proven wrong regarding the US federal debt as GDP (and thanks too; I don't like myself spouting incorrectness - unless it is deliberate  ;D), however, to clarify, in the 1990's the Liberal government switched to a different form of representing debt- which can be seen in the 252nd reply by Cdn Blackshirt. If we were to use present statistic's using the Liberal's "official" debt calculation, Canada's debt to GDP ratio would still be around 40%-45% ($500 Billion/$1.2 Trillion) - remember, if you saw Canada's present GDP at about $800-$900 Billion, you are seeing it being displayed in USD$. Debts are generally always shown in the currency of the debtor being looked at.


----------



## 48Highlander (10 May 2005)

Zartan said:
			
		

> Sorry.
> But creative statistics? Hear me out!
> While I was proven wrong regarding the US federal debt as GDP (and thanks too; I don't like myself spouting incorrectness - unless it is deliberate   ;D), however, to clarify, in the 1990's the Liberal government switched to a different form of representing debt- which can be seen in the 252nd reply by Cdn Blackshirt. If we were to use present statistic's using the Liberal's "official" debt calculation, Canada's debt to GDP ratio would still be around 40%-45% ($500 Billion/$1.2 Trillion) - remember, if you saw Canada's present GDP at about $800-$900 Billion, you are seeing it being displayed in USD$. Debts are generally always shown in the currency of the debtor being looked at.



Uh...wha?  Nobody was calculating our debt in US dollars.  But you can't compare Canadian NET debt to US GROSS Debt, and then say we're doing better than them.  Since you insist on looking at Canadian NET debt, you should compare it to the US net debt, which is sitting somewhere around 4 trillion dollars, or 40% of GDP.


----------



## a_majoor (10 May 2005)

Cdn Blackshirt said:
			
		

> One additional note.   I was watching ROBtv on Friday night and they were interviewing Criag Russell who is a Foreign Exchange Analyst from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.   The hosts asked him a question based on how the media portrays things which was: "So is the possibility of an election what is causing the fall in the Canadian Dollar."   His response: *"No not all.  The fear is that your Prime Minister, Paul Martin in a bid to stay in power will make concessions to the left and undermined the fiscal stability of your country.  And if you look at each and every fall in your dollar it was related to a specific unwise politically driven handout." *  To say the hosts were surprised by this response was was an understatement.   In short, be careful of the media assigning cause & effect.
> 
> Almost forgot, he also mentioned Paul Martin is destroying his international credibility based on what he is doing right now....



That quote alone should be forwarded to every friend, acquaintance, media outlet and blogger that you know....


----------



## a_majoor (17 May 2005)

The arguments regarding the US medicaid program are equally applicable to Canada's "healthcare" system:

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/cannon200505170805.asp



> *Welfare Reform's Unfinished Business*
> Medicaid has to be reined in.
> 
> By Michael F. Cannon
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (19 May 2005)

Is Canada doomed? Look at the character of the people who weild power in this country:

http://andrewcoyne.com/2005/05/proof-there-are-no-more-rules.php



> *Proof there are no more rules*
> 
> _They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
> -- The Great Gatsby_
> ...


----------



## Zartan (19 May 2005)

48th Highlander,
I never said that our debt was being calculated in USD$ - I said that it was probable that our GDP was for some of the calculations present in this topic. And where did you find the numbers for the American Federal Net Debt? Perhaps the only way to look at this is by comparing each budget: Canada - surplus (though probably not anymore - thanks PM PM) vs USA - deficit (amounting to over $400 billion dollars, and that is excluding war spending). At that rate, their "net" debt of $4 trillion would be increasing by 10% in one year. Plus, they are charging 4.0% interest to attract investment from overseas, against a rate of 2.0% for Canada. While we could argue that the USA still may be in a more favourable financial position than Canada, the question is: for how long?

P.S. sorry for the long response time. :-[


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## I_am_John_Galt (13 Jul 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> Zartan, the tax cuts are having their effect (even if the Washington Post is loath to admit any good news about the Bush administration):



And they continue to (note that the big jump is in Corporate tax revenues: you'd think the lefties would be creaming themselves, but alas, they get the last (irrelevant scare-mongering) word in this article).  Also funny how the NYT uses "unexepected" as a euphamism for "as demonstrated by Arthur Laffer 30 years ago":





> July 13, 2005
> *Sharp Rise in Tax Revenue to Pare U.S. Deficit*
> By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
> 
> ...


 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/business/13deficit.html?ei=5090&en=a410f8c74d4700a5&ex=1278907200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print


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## Zartan (14 Jul 2005)

Fair enough, I concede.  ;D Well done. Good for the US. I think we can all agree that it's always a good thing when deficits decrease without cutting spending. And I agree with your comments entirely.

"Future presidents and future Congresses," said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, "are going to be faced with pressure to drastically cut Social Security and Medicare because of the decisions being made now."

Uhm, the next generations having to face the world we build for them. Such is the way it has always been. Besides, thanks the magic of Inflation, our debts will be continually losing real value over time. At the same time, inflation and economic growth would see our goverments take in more money. If our governments can keep our debts controlled (and curtail any Japan-like economic collapses), our descendants shouldn't have that much to worry about. Well, I hope it works that way.

P.S. this thread is fairly confusing now

Environmentally speaking, I believe we should focus on water pollution and keeping our water clean. Every major city in Canada should have sewage treatment plants, rather than dumping it in the ocean. That should help.


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## a_majoor (14 Jul 2005)

Too bad our "Chattering class" dosn't understand economics like this:



> *Being Profitable Is â Å“Giving Backâ ?*
> Why the estate tax should be repealed.
> 
> By John Tamny
> ...


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## Zartan (14 Jul 2005)

Here's an excerpt from a book by a person who undoubtedly knows more about the subject than I do:

"Yes, a family farmer should be able to pass his farm down to his children. Fortunately, that hasn't been a problem. As the law existed before Bush took office, family farms had a $2.6 million exemption. For family farms worth more than $2.6 million, the heirs had a grace period of up to 14 years to pay the tax bill at low interest rates. The fact is that neither the _New York Times_ nor the American Farm Bureau Federation could find a single family farm that has ever been lost to the estate tax"
"In fact, the tax affects less than 2 percent of estates - and nearly half of the revenue it produces comes from taxes on 0.16 percent of estates, worth an average of $17 million, belonging to about 3 300 families each year. In 1999, fully a quarter of the estate tax revenue came from just 467 estates. As David Brooks, who works at the _Weekly Standard _ but is nonetheless a terrific guy, wrote in the _The New York Times_, the estate tax is "explicitly for the mega-upper class.""
"Bush has said that it is immoral to tax people when they die. Since we are currently experiencing a $450 billion deficit, the amount of the 
revenue being lost by the phase-out and eventual re-peal of the estate tax will have to be made up by taxes on you and me. It is arguably more moral to tax an incredibly rich person who is dead than a middle - or working-class person who is still alive. The living person might use the money for medical care, food, travel, or other things that dead rich people don't have to think about."
"However, the repeal of the estate tax will create a way to avoid not just double taxation, but also single taxation. Here's how to do it. Buy an enormous amount of stock or property. Let it accumulate value. Die. Now the money goes to your kids, who escape both estate and capital gains taxes. 
"This new tax loophole is not a trivial matter. For estates worth more than $10 million, over 56% of their value comes from unrealized capital gains. Capital gains come from money making money without anyone actually working. Thus, our nation's most generous tax laws will now apply to the children of the very rich inheriting money even their parents didn't earn."

-Al Franken, "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them".


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## a_majoor (14 Jul 2005)

Zartan said:
			
		

> "In fact, the tax affects less than 2 percent of estates - and nearly half of the revenue it produces comes from taxes on 0.16 percent of estates, worth an average of $17 million, belonging to about 3 300 families each year. In 1999, fully a quarter of the estate tax revenue came from just 467 estates.



So what is the argument here? We need to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy to get that last dollar from 0.16% of estates? Those statistics alone should put the issue to rest, the amount of money gained by estate tax (particularly when attempting to apply it against families wealthy enough to hire the best tax planners and lawyers to shield it) is hardly worth the candle.

The extreme position is ALL income taxes are immoral, after all, *what right do I have to demand the fruits of your effort and energy?* Consumption taxes, on the other hand, are "progressive" in the sense that people who have more money tend to spend more money; shopworn arguments about "the poor" can be simply countered by setting the consumption tax at a very low level with no exemptions, or start tinkering with exemptions (for example, a frozen pizza from the supermarket generally is sold without GST, but the same pizza cooked for you at Domino's has GST.)

The other argument that consumption taxes won't raise enough money can be countered by asking "raise enough money for what?" A lean government will have far less ability to indulge in Adscams, Shawinigates or Billion Dollar Boondoggles, and it would be fair to say that any service you can find in the Yellow Pages should not be offered by any government entity or agency.

If Canada wants to become relevant again, governmets at all levels should start disengaging from the population, and allow people to apply their energies to their own projects, instead of paying for bloated and inefficient governments. It has happened successfully in 70 nations around the world, so there is no reason it can't work here as well.


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## mainerjohnthomas (15 Jul 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> SoIf Canada wants to become relevant again, governmets at all levels should start disengaging from the population, and allow people to apply their energies to their own projects, instead of paying for bloated and inefficient governments. It has happened successfully in 70 nations around the world, so there is no reason it can't work here as well.


     Governments who disengage from the population have forfeited their right to collect any taxes as they have abrogated the responsibilities those taxes were to support.  Our governement in Canada does those jobs that we the people deem must be done for the common good, and deem best done by those sworn in the service of the crown, not simply the dollar.  This is the job we have asked be done in our names, it is for this that the government is empowered to levy taxes, and the day they cease to do our will, and decide it is thier decision what jobs need to be done, is the day they have lost the right to those taxes.  As a former soldier, I was frequently glad that it was not entirely in the government's descretion to HAVE an army, for whenever they "trim the fat", I see lost transport aircraft, main battle tanks, downgraded helicopters, fewer fighters, smaller regiments, longer deployments, but I see adscam continues full force.  If it was up to the politicians to trim goverment down to the jobs THEY think need to get done, we'd see more porkbarreling, and less military spending; Ottawa's priorities remain the same, no matter who sits at 24 Sussix drive.


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## a_majoor (15 Jul 2005)

mainerjohnthomas said:
			
		

> Governments who disengage from the population have forfeited their right to collect any taxes as they have abrogated the responsibilities those taxes were to support.  Our governement in Canada does those jobs that we the people deem must be done for the common good, and deem best done by those sworn in the service of the crown, not simply the dollar.  This is the job we have asked be done in our names, it is for this that the government is empowered to levy taxes, *and the day they cease to do our will, and decide it is thier decision what jobs need to be done, is the day they have lost the right to those taxes.  *



By disengage, I mean disengage from areas that are not the perview of government, such as daycare, advertizing, funding the arts, sports, profitable business etc. etc. Since the Liberal Government has long ago ceased to do our will, perhaps we really do need to dump tea in the Toronto harbour.

The modern nation state took shape in the 15-1600s since it had the most efficient means of raising and projecting force (superior to guilds, churches and all other contenders), and when you get right to the bottom, *governments still exist because they have the implicit monopoly on the use of force.* (If you choose to withhold your taxes to prevent another Adscam, the government has the power of the police to compell you to pay taxes, and sieze you and your chattel goods to get their due).

Canada has chosen to turn the defense of our nation over to the United States, we no longer pay many of our tax dollars to fund the Canadian Armed Forces, but we do indeed pay a considerable price for Uncle Sam's protection services.


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## Brad Sallows (15 Jul 2005)

>Our governement in Canada does those jobs that we the people deem must be done

It seems to me that what happens is government does jobs it thinks will be neato and we the people become lazy and accustomed to having them done and never directly seeing the bills.


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## Zartan (15 Jul 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> So what is the argument here? We need to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy to get that last dollar from 0.16% of estates? Those statistics alone should put the issue to rest, the amount of money gained by estate tax (particularly when attempting to apply it against families wealthy enough to hire the best tax planners and lawyers to shield it) is hardly worth the candle.


The issue is the very top of American society being able to continue living in wealth without having to create any wealth. If you'd like governments to disengage so people can work on their own projects, removing such laws will result in the opposite. The people in society with the best ability to fund and/or organize such projects won't, because they don't need to. The role of a government is to protect the people it governs. If you chose not to pay your taxes, you are damaging the country. Your taxes may not have gone to a scandalous issue in the first place, no less every single dollar of it. However, in choosing to do so, you could be affecting the funding of such visibly important things, such as funding for police or the military, or even someone's surgery. We may be in a surplus now, but how about down the road? or in a deficit situation; somebody is going to have to make up for it at some point.


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## a_majoor (15 Jul 2005)

*Investment creates wealth*. There are no counter arguments that can withstand evidence crossing hundreds of years and multiple nations, political systems religions or any other factor or grouping you can name. *If you confiscate wealth, you inhibit investment; therefore you lower everyone's standard of living.*


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## muskrat89 (15 Jul 2005)

> without having to create any wealth



At 17, I'm curious as to what experience you have in real world economics? Of course, there is still some "old money" around, but even so - do you think the "wealthy" have some secret money magnet that just sucks currency into their treasure rooms, from out of the sky?

Do you think that the "wealthy" don't bother to invest capital, build buildings, buy cars and boats and planes, or start more companies? The wealthy, aside from taxes, make more money and "create wealth" (or lose it), by dumping it back into the economy.....


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## Brad Sallows (15 Jul 2005)

>The issue is the very top of American society being able to continue living in wealth without having to create any wealth.

Do you plan on retiring one day, or do you intend to work until you drop dead?  Why would it matter to you if one person creates enough wealth during his productive years to permit a few generations of descendants to effectively live in retirement?

>The people in society with the best ability to fund and/or organize such projects won't, because they don't need to.

If they are content to run the tank dry, they won't - and even in that case, so what?  If they want to perpetuate their standards of living, they will invest.  Investors, in case you forgot, are the people who fund projects when the people with the best ability to dream up and organize such projects don't have the financial wherewithal to do it themselves.

If someone set out to destroy his accumulated wealth, do you believe you have a right to stop him and seize his assets?

>The role of a government is to protect the people it governs.

Close.  The role of a government is to protect the freedoms of the people it governs.

>If you chose not to pay your taxes, you are damaging the country.

How?  In this respect there is no measurable difference between someone who avoids paying taxes and someone who doesn't have to pay taxes.  From the point of view of the burden they impose on the country, they are almost equal.  (Not quite equal, because the tax avoider is probably at least self-sustaining.)  You have just stated that everyone who pays no taxes is damaging the country.  Should we get rid of them?  Also, people who pay a lesser share of income as taxes must be partially damaging the country.  Should we rectify that as well?

>However, in choosing to do so, you could be affecting the funding of such visibly important things

Everyone who advocates spending on "unimportant things" is affecting the funding of "visibly important things", and completely guilty of the same crime to an equal degree.  It doesn't matter whether a dollar is diverted or never arrives in the first place.  As long as there is one dollar available for pork barrel, discretionary, or non-core spending, the government is by definition already collecting more money than it needs.


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## Zartan (15 Jul 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> >The issue is the very top of American society being able to continue living in wealth without having to create any wealth.
> 
> Do you plan on retiring one day, or do you intend to work until you drop dead?


Yes, in fact I do plan on retiring someday, lest I be fortunate with a job I could tolerate, if not enjoy, until I die. In such a situation as a world without such taxes, could not the question also be: "Do you plan on working one day, or do you intend to live in retirement for your whole life?"

>Why would it matter to you if one person creates enough wealth during his productive years to permit a few generations of descendants to effectively live in retirement?
Personally, it would not matter in the least if that happened. Some could argue that it already is happening. It's not like Estate Taxes seize every single asset of the individual in question. I could imagine there would be more than enough wealth carried over in the inheritance for their descendants to live comfortably, for many a year, if not generations.

>>The people in society with the best ability to fund and/or organize such projects won't, because they don't need to.

>Investors, in case you forgot, are the people who fund projects when the people with the best ability to dream up and organize such projects don't have the financial wherewithal to do it themselves.

Doesn't the sentence you replied to prove I did not forget?

>>If you chose not to pay your taxes, you are damaging the country.

>How?  In this respect there is no measurable difference between someone who avoids paying taxes and someone who doesn't have to pay taxes.  From the point of view of the burden they impose on the country, they are almost equal.  (Not quite equal, because the tax avoider is probably at least self-sustaining.)  You have just stated that everyone who pays no taxes is damaging the country.  Should we get rid of them?  Also, people who pay a lesser share of income as taxes must be partially damaging the country.  Should we rectify that as well?

Having used the term 'chose', I am stating that people who chose not to pay taxes are a possible source of problems for the country. Some people pay no taxes because they don't have the means to be taxed, ex. an income, if one choses not to pay taxes, it is likely that that person had the following ability:
-To pay taxes.

>>However, in choosing to do so, you could be affecting the funding of such visibly important things

>Everyone who advocates spending on "unimportant things" is affecting the funding of "visibly important things", and completely guilty of the same crime to an equal degree.  It doesn't matter whether a dollar is diverted or never arrives in the first place.  As long as there is one dollar available for pork barrel, discretionary, or non-core spending, the government is by definition already collecting more money than it needs.

I agree.


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## 48Highlander (15 Jul 2005)

Zartan said:
			
		

> Having used the term 'chose', I am stating that people who chose not to pay taxes are a possible source of problems for the country. Some people pay no taxes because they don't have the means to be taxed, ex. an income, if one choses not to pay taxes, it is likely that that person had the following ability:
> -To pay taxes.



Ya know, I just never understood that line of argument.   What you're basicaly saying is that those who are rich enough to contribute to the economy by creating jobs and investing in new companies are actually DAMAGING the country...whereas those who can't afford to pay taxes and instead collect welfare checks are....what, good for the country?   Sorry, you'll have to explain that one again...


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## Zartan (15 Jul 2005)

Ah, shite!! Sorry everyone.


			
				48Highlander said:
			
		

> Ya know, I just never understood that line of argument.    What you're basicaly saying is that those who are rich enough to contribute to the economy by creating jobs and investing in new companies are actually DAMAGING the country...whereas those who can't afford to pay taxes and instead collect welfare checks are....what, good for the country?    Sorry, you'll have to explain that one again...


I didn't mean it in regards to that. I had thought somebody had written about ignoring their taxes earlier due to the adscam. I was referring to that, not the estate taxes. For the record I believe in Work-for-Welfare, and I hereby retire from this thread in ignominy.

As a final note, Work-for-Welfare is not present in Canada, at least to my knowledge, so perhaps that's another start.


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## a_majoor (17 Jul 2005)

The economics of Rock Stars. Even if they are publickly i favor of having our hard earned money sent to the cause of the week, they certainly know (both implicitly and explicitly) about how to be hard charging capitalists:



> *What rocks is capitalism... yeah, yeah, yeah*
> By Mark Steyn
> (Filed: 05/07/2005)
> 
> ...



Of course the same system could enrich us as well....


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## Zipper (18 Jul 2005)

Good article. Makes you think.

However. I did see after the whole thing was over, an interview with Bono on the fact that the organization he works with on this Africa debt thing doesn't actually give the money directly to the countries that need it. They actually have quite a list of qualification that must take place within that country before they get any money. In other words, totally corrupt dictatorships need not apply. In fact, I think they dangle the money in front of them and say "until you change, your not seeing a red dime of it."

It would be interesting to look further into it and see just what the qualification really are?


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## GO!!! (18 Jul 2005)

Whether they are giving money directly to corrupt dictators is immaterial.

The reason these individuals can carry on with displacing people with war, starvation etc. is that they know that the NGOs will step in and buy food/supplies locally, in order to feed the people the war displaced in the first place.

Are you aware that 74% of the aid money that goes to relieve the misery of sudanese refugees is spent in Sudan? It has the best infrastructure and market to buy the supplies needed. 

Soooooo. The Sudanese government supports (militarily) the janjaweed, who rape, torture and kill. We support the Sudanese economy and thus the government through taxes with millions in aid and spin off industries.

End result? Darfur is good for business. Even better, now that the Black africans have been corralled into concentration camps (dont fool yourself, thats what they are) the do gooder UN wants to broker a truce, which will have it's basis in the black africans being forced from their ancestral land, which, fortunately for it's new owners (the arab africans) is rich in both oil and diamonds.

Our aid sure made a difference.


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## 48Highlander (18 Jul 2005)

Not only that, but dictatorships are generaly great at exploiting any situation to their own advantage.  Take the sanctions in Iraq for instance.  Our theory was that if we enforced sanctions against them the people would either overthrow Sadam or he'd have to change the way he did business.  Instead he tightened the yolk and allowed massive missuse of the system by his military officers and politicians.  The sanctions intentionaly allowed first aid supplies to be delivered as well as food and other humanitarian supplies.  The people in charge of the distribution of such materials ofcourse immediately seized them, stockpiled them for their own use, and sold them to whoever could afford them at exuberant prices.  At the same time they preached about the evils of the Americans and the western nations whose horrible sanctions were causing hundreds of thousands of deaths.

  The same thing went on with humanitarian shipments in Somalia, and pretty much anywhere else where it's been tried without first pacifying the country.  Whoever has the guns will always appropriate the supplies, while at the same time screaming at anyone who will listen about the millions of people who are dying of desease and hunger.  So unless the UN grows some balls and sends in forces with usable ROE's to restore some kind of order, we can send all the aid we want and these countries will only continue to get worse - in effect we'll be feeding and equiping their military forces, which will only lead to more conflict.  Over the last few decades that the world has been sending aid to Africa, something like 10 trillion dollars has been infused into the region, yet it is undeniably in a worse state now than it was when we began.


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## a_majoor (18 Jul 2005)

48Highlander said:
			
		

> The same thing went on with humanitarian shipments in Somalia, and pretty much anywhere else where it's been tried without first pacifying the country.  Whoever has the guns will always appropriate the supplies, while at the same time screaming at anyone who will listen about the millions of people who are dying of desease and hunger.



And of course the millions and billions of Canadian Tax dollars were diverted by people with guns (the Government, which has the legal monopoly on the use of force) to enrich their friends while screaming about the need for "Heathcare", "The Poor", "Aborigional rights", "Regional Development"....vast inefficiencies and economic distortions occur because we are compelled to pay for goods and services which the providers could not entice us to purchase or support in the free market. Even a supposed dummy like George W Bush understands that lowering taxes increases the incentives to work, and thus the American economy (despite the many and varied government controls and regulations there) can still grow at almost twice the rate of the Canadian economy, and have almost 1/2 the unemployment.

One day a real crisis will overstress the brittle, overcentralized structures that have been erected by multiple levels of government, and who knows what will happen in the chaos that follows?


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## Zipper (19 Jul 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> One day a real crisis will overstress the brittle, overcentralized structures that have been erected by multiple levels of government, and who knows what will happen in the chaos that follows?



As an aside Majoor. By that last statement, it makes me wonder why then that you didn't like my suggested idea of further downloading certain government responsibilities to the level of municipalities on another thread? It would de-centralized government quite a bit.

As for the other statements above. It would be nice if the UN could do such things as "getting balls". But the big boys on the security council don't want that to happen, as it would spoil their fun in taking advantage of cheap labour and places to test their new military toys. Until that happens, I guess it will just have to be the monetary black hole of the world.


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## GO!!! (19 Jul 2005)

Before this thread turns into a socialist venting forum,

Please keep in mind that the prosperity that we enjoy, and the military equipment that we have are as a result of those damn "big boys".

We are them and they are us, Canada and Canadians are not on this moral high ground that the US cannot seem to reach. The clothes you are wearing were made in a sweatshop in asia, your computer parts are from Taiwan, and most of the parts of your newer domstic vehicle are from China.

The first world relies upon the oppression of the third for supplies of labour and raw materials. To suggest that this is somehow the exclusive domain of the members of the UN security council is to deny the source of our wealth and bury our heads in the sand.


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## Zipper (19 Jul 2005)

Agreed. We're as guilty as they are in the fact that we feed at the same trough that they created. No argument there.

I'm just saying that until they (as world leaders) decide to do things differently, things will not change significantly. 

Yes, were a part of the G-8 and thus "leaders". But everyone knows just how seriously we're taken on the world stage when we don't have the military to back up the money.

What did MacKenzie call us back in the day? A "middle" power? Whatever the hell that means.

And the rich and famous get richer, while spouting empty platitudes.


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## a_majoor (19 Jul 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> As an aside Majoor. By that last statement, it makes me wonder why then that you didn't like my suggested idea of further downloading certain government responsibilities to the level of municipalities on another thread? It would de-centralized government quite a bit.



By Downloading, we now have to pay @ $352 million dollars out of a budget of $800 million dollars in the City of London; 44% of our tax load is handed to us in the form of Provincial downloads. Oddly enough, I don't recall seeing Dalton McGuinty's name on the municipal ballot, nor Mr Dithers. Essentially, downloading is just another way of removing accountability and decreasing the flexibility of local Governments. What is really needed is "unloading" (which is the bulk of my proposed platform BTW).

As regular readers are aware, I have no sympathy/empathy or whatever for compelling taxpayers to support people, business, industry etc. that they do not support in the market place. By pulling the rug out from corporate welfare, at least in the London area, I believe that it will be possible to realize at least $100 million dollars in spending cuts, or about a 10% tax cut for London property taxes. Imagine being able to have an entire Adscam worth of money in the local economy for *personal * saving, spending, investment and so on. As an aside, the costs associated with terminating unneeded city employees, winding up existing contracts etc. is the reason I cannot realistically propose a $200 or 300 million dollar spending cut. In the follow on budgets, spending and taxes will gradually fall).

As for making Canada relevant again, carrying out this sort of disentanglement across the entire municipal spectrum would free billions of dollars across Canada, giving a burst of economic activity centred on the local governments that could cut the most efficiently. More economic growth would of course provide a better standard of living, and create the resources to start taking on bigger projects, and give companies the means to compete on the world stage.

My long term hope is that if this municipal disentanglement movement takes flight, an entire new generation of politicians who are for spending cuts and restraint will begin to make their mark in the Provincial and Federal arenas, creating bigger virtuous circles and allowing Canada to grow to her true potential.


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## Zipper (19 Jul 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> By Downloading, we now have to pay @ $352 million dollars out of a budget of $800 million dollars in the City of London; 44% of our tax load is handed to us in the form of Provincial downloads. Oddly enough, I don't recall seeing Dalton McGuinty's name on the municipal ballot, nor Mr Dithers. Essentially, downloading is just another way of removing accountability and decreasing the flexibility of local Governments. What is really needed is "unloading" (which is the bulk of my proposed platform BTW).



Ah but here is the kicker in my (actually alot of peoples that I agree with) idea. It would require a change in our constitution, but if it happened, it would allow municipalities to collect taxes off their population bases directly instead of having the federal or provincial levels doing so. Thus the money stays at the level that really needs it and you don't end up paying three levels of government before seeing your 10 cents on the dollar. Thus you not only download some of the responsibility from levels of government far removed from the issue, but you also have the money right there to use. 1 to 2 levels of bureaucracy instead of the x amount you have now, as well as shrinking all the useless ministries (if not getting rid of them entirely) above. Money more effectively spent on the level that needs it and able to cut taxes as well since your not filling the pockets of various inter-levels.

Its just getting those other levels of government to actually give up the taxes (power) in order to make it happen.


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## a_majoor (19 Jul 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Ah but here is the kicker in my (actually alot of peoples that I agree with) idea. *It would require a change in our constitution,* but if it happened, it would allow municipalities to collect taxes off their population bases directly instead of having the federal or provincial levels doing so. Thus the money stays at the level that really needs it and you don't end up paying three levels of government before seeing your 10 cents on the dollar. Thus you not only download some of the responsibility from levels of government far removed from the issue, but you also have the money right there to use. 1 to 2 levels of bureaucracy instead of the x amount you have now, as well as shrinking all the useless ministries (if not getting rid of them entirely) above. Money more effectively spent on the level that needs it and able to cut taxes as well since your not filling the pockets of various inter-levels.
> 
> *Its just getting those other levels of government to actually give up the taxes (power) in order to make it happen.*



Well, you just demonstrated why this *has* to be a self help project;

Changing the Canadian Constitution is virtually impossible both by accident and design, and;

Getting Mr McGuinty and Mr Dither's out of our pockets without an armed revolution seems beyond the capabilities of many voters.

There is a more fundimental reason to go this route as well; property taxes, as the name would indicate, are for the protection of property. City governments do not need to support hockey teams, arts festivals, multi-mational corporations looking for a new place to build a factory and so on (in fact, NO level of government should do these things). It is enough for the municipalities to ensure all citizens have access to the Police Force, Fire and Emergency services. I am not such a doctrinaire Libertarian as to suggest road and sewer work is the responsibility of private property owners, but I won't go much beyond that...


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## Brad Sallows (19 Jul 2005)

>it would spoil their fun in taking advantage of cheap labour

Do you suppose the cheap labour is forced to work?  Have you ever stopped to think about what the alternative was to working long hours for little pay, possibly in a hazardous workplace?  Do you realize the alternatives can in fact be _worse_?


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## Zipper (20 Jul 2005)

Hey I can dream can't I? Its not like we're not throwing ideas to the wind around here? Most OF THE ideas around here are not going to go much further then this forum as it is, but its still nice to field the ideas. And if hell froze over, I think it would work better then what we have now.



			
				Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Do you suppose the cheap labour is forced to work?   Have you ever stopped to think about what the alternative was to working long hours for little pay, possibly in a hazardous workplace?   Do you realize the alternatives can in fact be _worse_?



Agreed. Its better (barely) then prostitution and other such enendeavoursI guess what is hard for us (westerners) is the fact that we're seeing these countries go through working conditions we haven't seen since the 1800's. We would like to see everything, "poof", be like us.


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## Cdn Blackshirt (20 Jul 2005)

GO!!! said:
			
		

> Before this thread turns into a socialist venting forum,
> 
> Please keep in mind that the prosperity that we enjoy, and the military equipment that we have are as a result of those darn "big boys".
> 
> ...



This has been a recent development.  Up until at least the mid-70's North America and Europe were relatively self-sufficient (and were plenty prosperous considering that in many cases only one parent needed to work).  Globalization has forced the developed world to compete with the undeveloped world (who obviously want to become developed) which has driven down wages, forced both parents to work in most cases and left those with lower incomes, and less job security dependent upon goods provided by nations who are responsible in part for their new lowered standard of living. 

That all being said, my biggest complaint about globalization is the lack of political foresight in regards to the PRC.  The fact that I believe it is nearly $70 billion in foreign direct investment goes into the PRC each year from the United States, Canada and Europe is baffling to me.  In essence, we are funding the newest manufacturing infrasture in a nation that uses its trade surpluses (due to our baffling allowance of their goods into our country) to undermine the West at every opportunity.  Specifically, if you look up "dictator" or "ethnic cleansing" and then look for "largest trading partner", you'll usually find "China" at the top of the list.  Worse, is they're now using that bankroll (now over $700 billion USD in foreign currency reserves) to export a new form of totalitarian socialism (much like the Saudis exported Wahhabiism) around the world.  Zimbabwe, Sudan, all the Central Asian members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Venezuela, Cuba....and now they're pushing into make inroads in Central in South America.  

I've been on record for at least two years now that the PRC will emerge to become nearly as large a threat as the Soviet Union ever was, it will have been funded not by internal growth, but by the intentional exportation of wealth by myopic politicians, greedy businessmen and ignorant consumers.  In short, this last decade will be looked back upon as one of the short-sighted in our histories....

Rant over....


Matthew.


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## GO!!! (20 Jul 2005)

Blackshirt,

A quick peruse of colonial history will soon convince you that Europe has not been self sufficient since the early 1500's. The colonial powers built their empires based on the need for certain raw materials at economical prices. Initially, these were restricted to luxury items (tea, sugar, whale baleen for dresses etc.) 

The very exploratory drive that led to the discovery of North America was driven by a scarcity of many staples in europe.

Once the potential of offshore resources became common knowledge, it was only a matter of time before the europeans began to exploit them with the help (willing or coerced) of the locals. England has fed itself on Newfoundland fish for 200 years!

Further examples of europes lack of self sufficiency even in the pre-industrial revolution period can be found in the slave trade and the importing of rice from asia, and lentils and grain from Russia.

The fact that only one parent was working in the 70s was not due to "prosperity" it was due to a lower standard of living (both in real and today's dollars) the cheap resources that existed (2$ a barrel oil) and the fact that most women were not trained, encouraged or inclined to enter the workforce.

In addition to this, trying to make China the new Soviet Union will not bring the Cold War back, no matter how hard you try. While the concerns over China's distortions of the global economy are valid, the idea that they are building a global empire are not. China has said from the beginning that it is bent on recovering its "lost territories" These include Tibet, Macau,Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Ryu Kyu islands, in addition to rights over the shimsen strait. While you may call this "expansionism" they are really only trying to recapture lands lost during the colonial era.

The exporting of socialism is no more problematic than the exporting of capitalism, since we have established, numerous times, that both are ineffective at meeting the basic needs of the populations that they rule.

Globalisation is a good thing because it is an equaliser, in that it assigns a value to everything, and thus a worth. While a government may not be able to protect say, a forest, a private corporation sure can, and will, to protect it's investment.


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## Brad Sallows (20 Jul 2005)

Europe has been self-sufficient since the 1500s.  There is a difference between what is needed and what is wanted.  Exotic goods were desirable, not necessary.  I am unaware of any large scale slave trade in Europe since the collapse of the Roman Empire.

"China has said from the beginning..."

Taking their word for their intentions, eh?  Have you ever heard the admonition about not accepting what your competitor offers you?

>The exporting of socialism is no more problematic than the exporting of capitalism, since we have established, numerous times, that both are ineffective at meeting the basic needs of the populations that they rule.

Where have reasonably free markets ever failed to meet the basic needs of people?

Globalization doesn't assign value.  People assign values.  That's why statist systems and decision cycles are inherently inferior.  You can't force someone to accept that one hour of a liberal arts graduate's time working as a consultant for government is worth more than a pound of strawberries if what the person wants in the first place is a pound of strawberries.


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## Zipper (21 Jul 2005)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> You can't force someone to accept that one hour of a liberal arts graduate's time working as a consultant for government is worth more than a pound of strawberries if what the person wants in the first place is a pound of strawberries.



Yes, but at least a liberal arts student doesn't leave a red stain on your shirt.

Uh...

Ok maybe in your case Brad, they do. ;D


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## Britney Spears (21 Jul 2005)

> in addition to rights over the shimsen strait



I don't have anything to add here, but where is the "Shimsen strait"? I've tried Google and Wikipedia and I cannot seem to find any mention of this place.  Also you are mistaken about the Ryu Kyu Islands. While they were once part of the Chinese empire neither the current Chinese goverment or the goverment in exile in Taiwan has ever made a claim on Okinawa. You see,the Okinawans are not Chinese and never have been, it's on the other(eastern) side of Japan, and the only things of any value there are drunken American Marines.....

Agree with you on most of the other stuff about China though 

EDIT: oops, said west when I meant east.


----------



## a_majoor (21 Jul 2005)

From Old Europe, more economic bad news. It looks depressingly familier, since our governments adhere to the same formulas....



> *Merkel's Messy Manifesto*
> Germans shouldn't expect much in the way of post-election tax relief.
> 
> Don't expect a supply-side transformation of the German economy even if, as predicted, the Christian Democrats, led by Angela Merkel, win the coming general election. Indeed, where else but in Old Europe could the purported "conservativeâ ? political party launch an election campaign by proposing to raise taxes? As one observer quipped, "We shouldn't be talking about Maggie Merkel just yet.â ?
> ...


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## squealiox (25 Jul 2005)

OK everyone, thinking caps on -- it's quiz time.

why did toyota decide this month to locate its RAV4 plant in Ontario, refusing multimillion dollar subsidy offers to locate in southern US states?

i am already tingling with anticipation at the brilliant displays of logical contortionism i have come to expect from this thread...


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## Jaxson (25 Jul 2005)

since i currently work for an auto factory (chrysler of brampton) i can tell you... according to a recent study done by GMC the average canadian auto factory worker makes 8.50$ more an hour then the average american auto factory worker, But due to americas health care policies, the cost of each car plus what  that must be added to the price to cover any insurance is 1500$ per car in america, and only a stunning 150$ in canada...  so, although we cost more money to work, we are a hell of alot cheaper overall due to our health care and that means toyota can sell their cars at less money generating more sales... or at the same price with that much more profit. just my 2 cents. i could be very wrong.


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## mdh (25 Jul 2005)

In other words the Ontario taxpayer - via the health care system - is subsidizing Toyota to far greater extent than anything dreamed of in the Southern US. (Not to mention the continued currency differential).

Cheers, mdh


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## Ex-Dragoon (25 Jul 2005)

Jaxson, If you are unsure why make the claim?


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## Jaxson (25 Jul 2005)

dragoon: what i meant by being wrong is not what i said about us being cheaper with health care and stuff, i meant they could have a different reason other then this... but in light of this and wanting to back myself up, i will look for the link in which i based my claim.

yeah basically because we have better health care it is cheaper to employ us to build cars but hey, it does mean that much more of a boost to our economy, for us to build the care, we need plants that build the individual parts, places that make the leather and sets and roofs , then ship to a common place where the entire seat set is built and assembled and then shipped to the actual car factory where it is installed into the frame... for instance, when Chrysler of Brampton started its third shift (January this year) Chrysler itself hired like 2000-3000 new people for that one shift, and then all of its suppliers also had to hire enough to staff to fill a new shift of theirs.. its a massive economy boost and we should welcome it, even if its exploiting our cheaper costs. 

dont be surprised if japan starts contracts with Canada when their current ones run out in America.


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## Jaxson (25 Jul 2005)

sorry still havent been able to find the auto link i was looking for, ill look when i wake back up..


not the link i wanted but i found this 


http://www.canada.com/businesscentre/story.html?id=407a49e3-3b0c-43ee-a93e-a3d0b770522d


so if america wont let them buy into their country, they might buy into ours and that would be a nice chunk of extra change as the article states "foreign exchange reserves of over $711 billion China could conceivably buy almost half of the Dow 30 companies or nearly the entire TSX 60" i doubt we would let them buy that much though... but damn that chunk of change... too bad their commies.

and america seems to be buying extra items off us such as rail cars for their subways... at 425 million$ US 


http://www.canada.com/news/business/story.html?id=0170906c-bd0d-4d97-a01d-b436660df7af


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## a_majoor (25 Jul 2005)

mdh said:
			
		

> In other words the Ontario taxpayer - via the health care system - is subsidizing Toyota to far greater extent than anything dreamed of in the Southern US. (Not to mention the continued currency differential).
> 
> Cheers, mdh



And that is really the name of the game, transfer costs and risks to the taxpayer whenever and however possible. Next time you see someone with a Toyota, you should demand they give you a lift in "your" car.


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## Brad Sallows (25 Jul 2005)

$8.50 / hour -> $17,680 /year.  And you claim the health care cost differential is $1,350.  If your numbers are correct, the myth the socialists have been promulgating that our vaunted health care system in large part won over Toyota has surely been destroyed.


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## Jaxson (25 Jul 2005)

brad surprisingly enough the most serious injury ive seen in the last 2.5 years of working at chrysler is dehydration other then that, a few cuts, scrapes and such of that matter...so really it is worth having our taxpayers pay for that instead of not getting all those extra jobs and such... and sorry guys i cant find that link but it was in the toronto sun between monday and thursday ... if that helps... :-\


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## Zipper (25 Jul 2005)

Here is an idea.

We recieved the contract and are building a new factory. Lets hope more come our way.

Be happy! ;D


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## a_majoor (25 Jul 2005)

Zipper said:
			
		

> Here is an idea.
> 
> We recieved the contract and are building a new factory. Lets hope more come our way.
> 
> Be happy! ;D



I'm sure that is exactly the response Dalton McGuinty and Mr Dithers are hoping for. Since not enough people are interested or willing to look at how corporations can get subsidized by the taxpayers (i.e. you and me), they don't equate the collossal tax bite (for many Canadians the single biggest household expense) with the new factory or similar announcements. 

A check sum for this proposition is that the shareholders and management of a corporation like Toyota *should* favor placing the factory in a low tax environment like Alberta, but do not. Although there are lots of externalities which make this a difficult question to answer, there should still be a few eyes looking into the reasons for that.


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## I_am_John_Galt (25 Jul 2005)

Um, according to this article, Toyota chose Ontario because training costs (not wages or healthcare) outweighted the benefit of the subsidies:





> *Toyota to build 100,000 vehicles per year in Woodstock, Ont., starting 2008 *
> 06:40 PM EDT Jul 25
> 
> STEVE ERWIN
> ...


 http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/050630/b0630102.html

Of course a more cycnical take on it is that most of the skilled workers in the southern states _already have jobs_.  Of course the notion that we are benefitting merely by our proximity and access to the US economy doesn't make any sense at all ...




			
				Zipper said:
			
		

> Ah but here is the kicker in my (actually alot of peoples that I agree with) idea. It would require a change in our constitution, but if it happened, it would allow municipalities to collect taxes off their population bases directly instead of having the federal or provincial levels doing so. Thus the money stays at the level that really needs it and you don't end up paying three levels of government before seeing your 10 cents on the dollar. Thus you not only download some of the responsibility from levels of government far removed from the issue, but you also have the money right there to use. 1 to 2 levels of bureaucracy instead of the x amount you have now, as well as shrinking all the useless ministries (if not getting rid of them entirely) above. Money more effectively spent on the level that needs it and able to cut taxes as well since your not filling the pockets of various inter-levels.
> 
> Its just getting those other levels of government to actually give up the taxes (power) in order to make it happen.



I recall reading in one of those "Tax Havens for Dummies"-type books that the Federal Government actually has no authority to collect income taxes.  The BNA Act (or whatever) explicitly gives the authority to collect income taxes to the Provincial Governments only, and moreover, that authority is _not transferable_.  I'm curious if there's any legal experts that can confirm (or correct) that ...


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## squealiox (25 Jul 2005)

here's an actual top intl trade economist's take on the toyota decision:




> Toyota, Moving Northward
> NYTF000020050725e17p00032
> Editorial Desk; SECTA
> By Paul Krugman
> ...


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## Britney Spears (25 Jul 2005)

> recall reading in one of those "Tax Havens for Dummies"-type books that the Federal Government actually has no authority to collect income taxes.  The BNA Act (or whatever) explicitly gives the authority to collect income taxes to the Provincial Governments only, and moreover, that authority is not transferable.  I'm curious if there's any legal experts that can confirm (or correct) that ...



Subsection 91(3) of the _Constitution Act, 1867_, formerly the _ British North America Act, 1867_ provides the federal goverment with unlimited powers of taxation by permitting "The raising of money by any mode or system of taxation."

http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Canada/English/ca_1867.html

Good try though.


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## I_am_John_Galt (25 Jul 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> here's an actual top intl trade economist's take on the toyota decision:


_
"By Paul Krugman"_

He ceased to be an Economist (let alone an "actual top intl trade economist," though I'm not really certain what that means) the moment the Democrats lost the White House.

Wait about 3 days and I'm certain there will be around 50 bulletproof rebuttals by economists that don't have vested political interests.  Besides, his argument obscures the issue for cheap political points, though I'm sure _HE _is aware of that ...


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## I_am_John_Galt (25 Jul 2005)

Britney Spears said:
			
		

> Subsection 91(3) of the _Constitution Act, 1867_, formerly the _ British North America Act, 1867_ provides the federal goverment with unlimited powers of taxation by permitting "The raising of money by any mode or system of taxation."
> 
> http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Canada/English/ca_1867.html
> 
> Good try though.



Sorry, I'm typing too fast again!  I meant "...the authority to collect _Provincial_ income taxes to the Provincial Governments only..." (as in the Feds can collect taxes to pay for stuff of federal jurisdiction, but not collect taxes _on behalf of _ the Provinces and transfer it to them.


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## Britney Spears (25 Jul 2005)

In that case, I refer you to:

- _Income Tax Act_ Section 228: Applying payments under collection agreements.

- _Federal Provincial Fiscal Arrangements and federal Post-Secondary Education and Health Contributions Act_ Part III, Administrative Agreeements

<a href=http://laws.justice.gc.ca/fr/F-8/7513.html#article-7>Which says:</a>



> 7. (1) The Minister or the Minister of National Revenue, with the approval of the Governor in Council, may on behalf of the Government of Canada enter into an administration agreement with the government of a province or an aboriginal government.




and the Income Tax Act and Financial Administration Acts of your province. For mine (Alberta) you have to pay to see it so I won't bother. 

But if you do discover that the existance of the CRA happens to be unconstitutional, do let us know.


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## Britney Spears (25 Jul 2005)

So if I'm not mistaken, the final juristiction for the enforcement of the _Income Tax Act_ is the RCMP.


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## squealiox (25 Jul 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> _
> "By Paul Krugman"_
> 
> He ceased to be an Economist (let alone an "actual top intl trade economist," though I'm not really certain what that means) the moment the Democrats lost the White House.
> ...



he's still a working, paper-publishing economist who is regularly cited in peer-reviewed journals and texts. at least his employer, princeton u, seems to think so, as do the countless north american economics faculties that use his latest textbooks as standard texts. his speciality is int'l trade, a subject he certainly knows more about than any of the hack journalists i regularly see trotted out here.
and just what would his "vested interest" be, other than a lack of appropriate deference to the new PC of far-right pseudo-economics?
as for the coming rebuttals, which you appear to take on faith will be "bulletproof", we'll just have to see them first, won't we?


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## I_am_John_Galt (25 Jul 2005)

Yeah, that's the gist of what I recalled reading: that the Income Tax Act conflicts with the BNA Act, but it hasn't been challenged in the Supreme Court (the RevCan/CCRA people have always backed-down when it got that high).


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## Britney Spears (25 Jul 2005)

I don't see any conflict between the two acts, since the provinces have presumably entered into agreements with the federal goverment wrt to administration and enforcement of tax collection, so they've handed over the right to do so to the federal goverment. I suppose in theory a province could withdraw from the agreement and establish its own provincial revenue agency.


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## Jaxson (25 Jul 2005)

i am john galt:

lower training costs/lower health costs by the company all mean the same thing to toyota... More profit, even if we do cost more per hour its still cheaper then america's industry. HURRAY FOR CANADA KEEP THE CONTRACTS COMIN **sorry for the caps**

"But education is only one reason Toyota chose Ontario. Canada's other big selling point is its national health insurance system, which saves auto manufacturers large sums in benefit payments compared with their costs in the United States. 

You might be tempted to say that Canadian taxpayers are, in effect, subsidizing Toyota's move by paying for health coverage. But that's not right, even aside from the fact that Canada's health care system has far lower costs per person than the American system, with its huge administrative expenses. In fact, U.S. taxpayers, not Canadians, will be hurt by the northward movement of auto jobs. "


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## I_am_John_Galt (25 Jul 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> he's still a working, paper-publishing economist who is regularly cited in peer-reviewed journals and texts. at least his employer, princeton u, seems to think so, as do the countless north american economics faculties that use his latest textbooks as standard texts. his speciality is int'l trade, a subject he certainly knows more about than any of the hack journalists i regularly see trotted out here.
> and just what would his "vested interest" be, other than a lack of appropriate deference to the new PC of far-right pseudo-economics?
> as for the coming rebuttals, which you appear to take on faith will be "bulletproof", we'll just have to see them first, won't we?



Sorry, but ever since his personal little Enron payoff scandal I've been a little wary of his 'analysis': ever see the article he wrote about how soldiers griping about MREs is a clear indication they are unhappy with the (guess who) Bush administration?  A few months ago he did a 180 in columns two weeks apart ... he's got a million of 'em ... a sampling: http://home.pacbell.net/weidners/jottings2/krugman_index.htm



> lower training costs/lower health costs by the company all mean the same thing to toyota... More profit, even if we do cost more per hour its still cheaper then america's industry. HURRAY FOR CANADA KEEP THE CONTRACTS COMIN


 Sounds good doesn't it?  Would you rather have been working for the last 10 years or find out that you might be able to get a job in 2008?



> You might be tempted to say that Canadian taxpayers are, in effect, subsidizing Toyota's move by paying for health coverage.  But that's not right, even aside from the fact that Canada's health care system has far lower costs per person than the American system, with its huge administrative expenses. In fact, U.S. taxpayers, not Canadians, will be hurt by the northward movement of auto jobs. "


No one is suggesting that it isn't a marginal benefit for Canada: the point is that it is only a benefit because our economy is worse than that of the US.  Americans with equivalent skills already have jobs ... it is the equivalent of hiring IT people in India: they have tons of supply, while the American supply is already fully utilized.  We are the kids with no shoes in the Nike factory.

P.S> American healthcare per capita is higher than Canada's because they get more of it and the quality is much higher.  They also subsidize the entire world.


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## mdh (25 Jul 2005)

I'm not even sure what Squeeliox and Zipper are complaining about - really.

If you were a Japanese auto executive wouldn't you invest in Ontario? After all it's so familiar to them - an overtaxed and quiescent electorate, obedient to higher authority, rarely questioning the wisdom of one party rule, satisfied (or self-satisfied) with social and economic mediocrity.  

And the Ontario New Swedish Liberal Party is embarking on one of the biggest big government build ups the province has seen in years, and McGuinty's popularity has been restored. So what's to complain about, really?

The economic consequences are of course a different matter. As Arthur noted, the experience of Europe shows that the burden of social welfare programs is rapidly overwhelming the productivity of Germany and France. 

And in case you didn't notice, even the federal Liberal Party has admitted Canada's productivity has seriously fallen behind the US and it's putting together a so-called productivity agenda for the next budget - (which I'm sure will be the usual farce of targetted R&D spending, â Å“Centres of Excellenceâ ? whose boards are larded with Liberal appointments, and all the other apparatus required for an â Å“industrial strategyâ ? of 1970s vintage â â€œ in other words anything that avoids the real issue.

Cheers, mdh


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## Britney Spears (25 Jul 2005)

> If you were a Japanese auto executive wouldn't you invest in Ontario? After all it's so familiar to them - an overtaxed and quiescent electorate, obedient to higher authority, rarely questioning the wisdom of one party rule, satisfied (or self-satisfied) with social and economic mediocrity.



 ???


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## a_majoor (25 Jul 2005)

Some factors which influence Toyota are fairly obvious, such as the lower dollar, close access to the American market and an already existing infrastructure of transportation and suppliers. Other less obvious factors are government subsidized health care, government subsidized education (@70% of tuition costs, hence the "well trained work force"), and the ability to evade import duties through NAFTA. Road and rail links are supplied by the government, and even some companies have benefited from government pork over the years. Attempting to sort this out in dollar amounts would be quite difficult, and perhaps best left as a project for a grad student working for a PHD in economics.

Increasing taxes in a state or province which is suffering from low capital formation is the economic equivalent of squeezing blood from a stone. The practical effect is to drive out "the rich", who have the ability to shelter taxable assets or convert them into movable form and leave, sticking the "poor" with the greater burden. States like Alabama might do a lot better to reform the regulatory environment and look at ways to free the flows of capital inside the state.

The CCRA has agreements with most provinces to collect provincial tax on behalf of the provincial government, currently only Quebec has a separate provincial tax collection agency, with all the extra associated costs that entails. (This would be justifiable if Quebec had a very different system of calculating taxes, like a flat or single tax, but they don't).

The Minister of Revenue and Taxation is the final authority on collecting taxes, but the RCMP provides the ultimate sanction should you choose not to pay up!


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## I_am_John_Galt (25 Jul 2005)

Britney Spears said:
			
		

> I don't see any conflict between the two acts, since the provinces have presumably entered into agreements with the federal goverment wrt to administration and enforcement of tax collection, so they've handed over the right to do so to the federal goverment. I suppose in theory a province could withdraw from the agreement and establish its own provincial revenue agency.



The point that I am trying to confirm is that (supposedly) they *can't* hand that right over to the feds: it is an issue of (de)centralization of power.


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## Britney Spears (25 Jul 2005)

> The point that I am trying to confirm is that (supposedly) they *can't* hand that right over to the feds: it is an issue of (de)centralization of power.



Well they haven't *handed it over*. The province still collects taxes on the other stuff (liquor, etc), and they can choose to collect their own income taxes if they want, like Quebec. I don't see anything in the constitution saying that the provinces *can't* delegate it to the federal goverment. What difference would it make?


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## Britney Spears (25 Jul 2005)

The above In detail:


> 92. In each Province the Legislature may *exclusively make Laws* in relation to Matters coming within the Classes of Subject next hereinafter enumerated; that is to say,--
> 
> 1. Repealed.(48)
> 
> ...



So, if I were the SCOC I would conclude that the Province has the right to delegate the administration and collection to the federal goverment, but I think you could pobably argue your point on the "exclusive" part. I don't suppose anyone has any cases handy for reference?

Those silly buggers should have posted the damn thing on army.ca first, so we could go over it and pick out ambiguities like this.


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## squealiox (26 Jul 2005)

mdh said:
			
		

> I'm not even sure what Squeeliox and Zipper are complaining about - really.
> 
> If you were a Japanese auto executive wouldn't you invest in Ontario? After all it's so familiar to them - an overtaxed and quiescent electorate, obedient to higher authority, rarely questioning the wisdom of one party rule, satisfied (or self-satisfied) with social and economic mediocrity.



so you mean to say that despite being 23% foreign-owned and listed on the Tokyo and NY stock exchanges, Toyota is completely immune to the disciplinary effect of capital markets? guess that makes the entire finance industry redundant, then. time to update my resume...




> No one is suggesting that it isn't a marginal benefit for Canada: the point is that it is only a benefit because our economy is worse than that of the US.  Americans with equivalent skills already have jobs ... it is the equivalent of hiring IT people in India: they have tons of supply, while the American supply is already fully utilized.  We are the kids with no shoes in the Nike factory.



in other words, you are saying that none of these low-wage southern states have economies capable of adding new workers to meet the demand for adequately skilled labour (toyota DID consider locating there), now that the supposedly fixed number of good ones are all employed. come to think of it, do you even have any data to back up this weird claim?


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## I_am_John_Galt (26 Jul 2005)

Britney Spears said:
			
		

> The above In detail:
> So, if I were the SCOC I would conclude that the Province has the right to delegate the administration and collection to the federal goverment, but I think you could pobably argue your point on the "exclusive" part. I don't suppose anyone has any cases handy for reference?
> 
> Those silly buggers should have posted the darn thing on army.ca first, so we could go over it and pick out ambiguities like this.



Yeah, that's the crux: it doesn't say that the Provinces can delegate that power (or any other, for that matter) to another level of government.  IIRC, the book that I read said that the CCRA/RevCan people have always settled out-of-court when anyone has gotten close to challenging it.


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## I_am_John_Galt (26 Jul 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> in other words, you are saying that none of these low-wage southern states have economies capable of adding new workers to meet the demand for adequately skilled labour (toyota DID consider locating there), now that the supposedly fixed number of good ones are all employed. come to think of it, do you even have any data to back up this weird claim?



Huh?  Who said anything about "fixed" supply?  Toyota would have to do more more training of the (obviously lesser-skilled) _available _workforce in the southern States vis-a-vis Ontario (which is to say that Ontario has more unemployed skilled and semi-skilled workers available to work at  the future Toyota plant).  The incremental cost of training the available American workforce is more than what was offered to be offset by subsidy, ergo the decision to locate in Ontario (of course there were other factors, too).  Check out the relative unemployment rates: the unskilled are generally the last to get hired, because they require a greater training investment.  It is quite straightforward: what is weird about this?


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## mdh (26 Jul 2005)

> Quote from: mdh on Yesterday at 21:37:45
> I'm not even sure what Squeeliox and Zipper are complaining about - really.
> 
> If you were a Japanese auto executive wouldn't you invest in Ontario? After all it's so familiar to them - an overtaxed and quiescent electorate, obedient to higher authority, rarely questioning the wisdom of one party rule, satisfied (or self-satisfied) with social and economic mediocrity.
> ...



Even though my rhetorical outburst was meant tongue-in-cheek, I'm still not sure what you are arguing about.  If you're suggesting that government has a role to play in the economy then fine - that is of course a legitimate position to take.  I take the position (and I assume one or two others here do as well  ) that there is too much government in the Canadian economy and it's impacting one of the most important elements of a strong future economy - productivity.  

There's little debate about this - it is an economic fact that our productivity has been very weak compared to the US.  

Ontario's manufacturing sector, for example, was artificially shielded from this throughout most of the 1990s because of our low dollar policy. (see below from today's Vancouver Sun). It's possible that a higher dollar will spur efficiencies - but only to a degree.  

Taxation is part of the productivity equation - whether the CAW or the NDP likes it or not. Unfortunately, the left has made a high tax regime synonomous with patriotism and it's been difficult to debate the issue without the usual propaganda about the glories of the Canadian welfare state trotted out as the ultimate trump card. 

Your fixation with Toyota building another plant in Ontario - while interesting - hardly negates the arguments put forward by a_majoor and IAJG.

Presumably you have a better solution to offer for Canada's economic future?



> Canada's productivity gap - Vancouver Sun, A09 - 26-Jul-2005
> 
> By Jock Finlayson
> 
> ...


----------



## Britney Spears (26 Jul 2005)

> Yeah, that's the crux: it doesn't say that the Provinces can delegate that power (or any other, for that matter) to another level of government.   IIRC, the book that I read said that the CCRA/RevCan people have always settled out-of-court when anyone has gotten close to challenging it.



I don't understand. I can see an individual sueing his provincial goverment over this (whether the province has the right to delegate tax collection), but to what end? If he does win he'll just end up paying more taxes, no? And how exactly does one "settle" in a case like this? I can't see how the CRA would even be involved in such a suit....

Can you give a few more details about this case?


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## I_am_John_Galt (26 Jul 2005)

Britney Spears said:
			
		

> I don't understand. I can see an individual sueing his provincial goverment over this (whether the province has the right to delegate tax collection), but to what end? If he does win he'll just end up paying more taxes, no? And how exactly does one "settle" in a case like this? I can't see how the CRA would even be involved in such a suit....
> 
> Can you give a few more details about this case?



I wish I could, it was a while ago (the book was "My Blue Haven," or something along those lines), but the gist of it was that a few people had sued RevCan on the basis that it had no authority to collect taxes on behalf of the Provinces (or, I think more accurately, that the authority it had been given was unconstitutional).  IIRC, there were two reaons for challenging it: 1) to make it more difficult for the governments (in general) to collect income taxes (which would in turn make it more difficult for them to spend taxpayer's money without more accountability); and 2) reduce the reliance of Provincial Governments on transfers from the feds (making them more accountable for their spending, too).  The bigger picture was that the power that  RevCan/CCRA holds has become too tyrranical and needs to be checked.  Of course I realize that Income Taxes are collected solely by the Federal Government (except in Quebec, no?) to reduce adminstrativfe costs and there would be some offsetting overheads (although the degree is in question) ... it would cause a tax crisis that would force a rethink of the collection of Income Taxes (and the spending of same).


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## a_majoor (26 Jul 2005)

While it may be an interesting law case in theory, the taxpayer foolish enough to attempt to fight the CCRA in court had better be named Bill Gates, because the Government has the resources and willpower to crush anyone else who can't muster up similar resources, armies of lawyers etc. It would also be difficult to fight a multi-year court battle with all your assets seized to pay taxes owing  

I will argue the only way to fight against low productivity, high taxation and an adverse regulatory environment is to do it as a "self help" project at the municipal level. This isn't quite as exciting as singing the "International" at the barricades while the HMCS Aurora fires the opening shot in Toronto harbour (oops, wrong revolution), *but it is a level that is accessable to all of us,* can be tacked in a dispersed manner, and has measurable and immediate impact on the taxpayer and local economy. I have argued that my home city of London Ontario could see a spending and tax cut totalling $100 million dollars; which is not only not a huge streach given an $800 million dollar budget, but also highly symbolic: one Adscams worth of money injected back into the local economy.

Politics is not only about results, it is about theater. *Running for municipal office or supporting candidates who run on tax and spending cut platforms is certain to arouse comment and drive discussion,* as long as the candidates and supporters are not obvious nutbars and astute enough not to fall into media traps, they will get a message out, they will start at least some people questioning the status quo, and perhaps they will win their elections and start putting these proposals into practice.

*The spectacle of a city reducing its budget and ramping up local employment, attracting outside investment and so on can only build the virtuous circle as people outside of those municipalities begin to question why "they" are not getting the bigger pie, and begin to take action against status quo municipal politicians. *My long term hope, of course is that many of these new generation politicians can and will set their sights on higher levels of government, and put these proven principles to work there as well.


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## squealiox (27 Jul 2005)

mdh said:
			
		

> Your fixation with Toyota building another plant in Ontario - while interesting - hardly negates the arguments put forward by a_majoor and IAJG.
> 
> Presumably you have a better solution to offer for Canada's economic future?



canada's productivity is behind that of the us in a number of industries that we probably shouldn't be too involved in in the first place. we just don't have the comparative advantage in some of these fields. in others, there is of course real room for improvement.
and this gets to my main point: our govt spending is probably to blame for much of these bad decisions, but not EVERY AREA of govt spending. the biggest culprit is industrial and regional subsidies and other forms of protectionism, which do a lot of damage by distorting the economy. On the other hand, _some_ spending on healthcare, education, social safety net, etc., may well provide benefits that are more than negated by the costs of excessive industrial policy.
the toyota case just happens to be a tidy illustration of this. it appears, among other things, the southern states just can't meet the demand for skilled labour as well as canada can (and that remains the simplest explanation, pending any actual data to the contrary emanating from Galt's Gulch).
to dogmatically ignore this distinction and robotically cry "suffocating nanny state" at every penny of public expenditure is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and is in any case unrealistic.


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## I_am_John_Galt (27 Jul 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> the toyota case just happens to be a tidy illustration of this. it appears, among other things, the southern states just can't meet the demand for skilled labour as well as canada can (and that remains the simplest explanation, pending any actual data to the contrary emanating from Galt's Gulch).



What the hell statistics are you looking for?!?!?!?

Here's in article from 2002 describing Hyundai's new plant in Montgomery (this is when the skilled workforce in the southeast US was getting jobs):





> Talking to economic developers in the southeast over the past eight months was impossible without the mention of Hyundai Motors. The Korean automaker's success in this country made it inevitable that it would build an assembly plant here. Everyone expected Hyundai to choose the southeast for its low labor costs and low unionization ratesâ â€œbut which state? On April 3, Hyundai followed the path taken by Mercedes, Toyota, and Honda since 1993 by choosing Alabama. ... *According to Hyundai, it was Montgomery's and Alabama's quality of workforce*, proximity to U.S. population centers, efficient automotive parts supply chain in the region, and closeness to the Port of Mobile that made the case for Alabama. The plant will manufacture Hyundai's mid-size sedans and sport-utility vehicles ...


 http://www.facilitycity.com/busfac/bf_02_06_analysis.asp

In 2004, it was noted that continued low unemployment was creating a shortage of skilled labour: 





> Maintaining the current low rate of unemployment requires employment growth roughly in balance with labor force growth -- on average, this implies net creation of about 1.3 million jobs per year. However, from early 1995 to early 1998, the U.S. economy actually generated more than 5 million new jobs. A slowdown from this very rapid rate of job creation seemed likely, even without a slowing of the overall economy from external forces. *Tightening labor markets show evidence that they are beginning to increase the unit cost of labor, and increases in the labor force resulting from ever higher participation rates have been harder to sustain as each new record level was achieved.* Thus, it appears that the U.S. pace of job creation can fall dramatically without any significant increase in the unemployment rate.
> 
> *The greatest challenge that U.S. employers face with slow labor force growth and tight labor markets is meeting their needs for a higher skilled workforce. Thirty years ago, new entrants to the labor force typically had higher levels of education than the older workers who were retiring. That is no longer true.* Furthermore, there have been significant changes in the way work is done. Research shows that these changes have significantly increased the productivity payoff of higher skill levels. Technology and workplace organization have both played a role in these productivity increases. Improvements in skills sought by employers will have to come primarily through investments in the human capital of existing workers.


 http://www.epf.org/pubs/newsletters/1998/et981116.asp

In late 2004, Hyundai (remember them?) ran into trouble _finding _skilled labour to staff the new plant: 





> *Help Wanted: Auto workers*
> _
> Competition intense as Hyundai, suppliers work to fill 5,000 jobs_
> 
> ...


 http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/specialreports/hyundai/StoryBusinessworker08w.htm

And you claim that the shortage of skilled labourers had nothing to do with Toyota's decision?  Who are you calling dogmatic?  Skilled workers in Canada are getting jobs because skilled workers in the US are already working.


----------



## I_am_John_Galt (27 Jul 2005)

And a more direct critique of the Krugman article (particularly the notion of the supposed healthcare benefit:



> July 25, 2005
> 
> *Krugman's sloppy economics*
> 
> ...


 http://www.atlanticblog.com/archives/001977.html#001977


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## squealiox (27 Jul 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> In 2004, it was noted that continued low unemployment was creating a shortage of skilled labour:   http://www.epf.org/pubs/newsletters/1998/et981116.asp



you might want to actually check the date on that article. it's from *16 Nov 1998 * -- at the height of a particularly overheated jobs market, when the unemployment rate was, as it says, "at its lowest level in the past 28 years."
(and you might also want to try explaining away the statement:"Thirty years ago, new entrants to the labor force typically had higher levels of education than the older workers who were retiring. That is no longer true." sorta suggests the problem is a lot closer to the supply end than the demand end, don't you think?)



> According to Hyundai, it was Montgomery's and Alabama's quality of workforce, proximity to U.S. population centers, efficient automotive parts supply chain in the region, and closeness to the Port of Mobile that made the case for Alabama.



and of course you saw no reason to highlight all these other considerations, or how they all affect one another. and the article seems to be comparing alabama's advantages with other u.s. states, rather than, say, canada or japan. and anyway, it gives by far the greatest prominence to the "low cost" advantage.



> 2) Employees may be able to get something cheaper if it is an employer benefit than if it is provided by the market. Usually this is for tax reasons. My employer provides free parking (actually free if you show up early enough). Unlike my salary, the value of this benefit is not taxed. This *is a reason why American employers frequently offer health insurance, because employer provided insurance gets more favorable tax treatment than insurance you purchase yourself*.


*this is just mind-boggling*. the whole reason U.s. employers can provide full coverage cheaper than employees could provide it for themselves (if the same were actually available to random individuals) has nearly nothing to do with taxes or even buyer power and everything to do with health insurers' inherent inability to make money by selling to self-selecting customers. in the industry, it's called adverse selection.
it's also the big reason the canadian system can cover everyone at lower cost than u.s. insurers can.


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## a_majoor (28 Jul 2005)

> this is just mind-boggling. the whole reason U.s. employers can provide full coverage cheaper than employees could provide it for themselves (if the same were actually available to random individuals) has nearly nothing to do with taxes or even buyer power and everything to do with health insurers' inherent inability to make money by selling to self-selecting customers. in the industry, it's called adverse selection.
> it's also the big reason the Canadian system can cover everyone at lower cost than u.s. insurers can.



Without qualifications, the arguments about health care spending are like comparing apples to halibut, since the systems are so dissimilar. When doing comparisons based on hard data like number of MRI or CT scanners per capita, Canada, despite its vast health care spending, comes up rather short (1.7 MRI/million population vs 7.7/million in the US; 8.1 CT scan/million vs 13.4/million in the US), and we see newspaper articles from time to time highlighting the practice of sending Canadian patients to the US for various treatments (from blasting kidney stones with ultrasonic shockwaves to cancer treatment) which is simply unavailable to Canadians in anything like a timely manner.

A company like Toyota might find it annoying when something like this hapens to one of its Canadian employees, but on the other hand, since the Canadian taxpayer is covering the bill anyway, (along with so much else), it still keeps *the shareholder *happy.

The health insurance industry in the US may indeed use "adverse selection", but the thrust of this argument is that the *buyer* of insurance is being influenced by external factors such as cost and tax treatment. If the United States moves towards "Health Savings Accounts" (sort of like an RRSP, except you save the money to offset routine health care costs), then you will see market pressures change the way the US health care system operates since individual consumers will have an immediate impact on the system, rather than a cartel of insurance companies. How this will affect Corporate hiring and infrastructure investment is anyone's guess, since it depends on how the system is structured. *The only "sure thing" is the company will factor that in the decision making process, with the ultimate goal of maximizing shareholder value.*


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## loyalcana (29 Jul 2005)

Actually some of that data is a bit out of date, you can find a newer report here
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/16/9/34969633.pdf 
or just googling OECD health data Canada

Things aren't as bad on the MRI/CT scan front as they were in 2001 but we still lag behind with 4.6MRI/million, 10.3 CT scanners/million. 
One big thing to note is that the U.S governments spend more per capita on health care than what Canada does from both government and privately.


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## I_am_John_Galt (29 Jul 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> you might want to actually check the date on that article. it's from *16 Nov 1998 * -- at the height of a particularly overheated jobs market, when the unemployment rate was, as it says, "at its lowest level in the past 28 years."
> (and you might also want to try explaining away the statement:"Thirty years ago, new entrants to the labor force typically had higher levels of education than the older workers who were retiring. That is no longer true." sorta suggests the problem is a lot closer to the supply end than the demand end, don't you think?)


  I missed the date, but the point stands anyway: the US has been at or near full employment for almost the whole ensuing period.



> and of course you saw no reason to highlight all these other considerations, or how they all affect one another. and the article seems to be comparing alabama's advantages with other u.s. states, rather than, say, canada or japan. and anyway, it gives by far the greatest prominence to the "low cost" advantage.


  Um, yeah: what is confusing about this?  When Hyundai made the decision to build, they thought that there was more available (=unemployed) skilled workforce (= less training costs): when it came to actually staffing the plant, they found that it was not the case.  Instead of repeating Hyundai's mistake, Toyota looked for an available skilled, workforce.




> *this is just mind-boggling*. the whole reason U.s. employers can provide full coverage cheaper than employees could provide it for themselves (if the same were actually available to random individuals) has nearly nothing to do with taxes or even buyer power and everything to do with health insurers' inherent inability to make money by selling to self-selecting customers. in the industry, it's called adverse selection.
> it's also the big reason the canadian system can cover everyone at lower cost than u.s. insurers can.


The Canadian System DOES NOT cover everyone to anywhere near the same level as US insurers: this is why it is cheaper.  Period.  Actually, the only Canadians that have similar levels of coverage are those that have supplemental coverage purchased themselves or through their employers (but it's not a second tier).  For the mind-boggled, the realities of economics doesn't always reflect your favourite theoretical argument.  Adverse Selection is a theoretical problem for the US Insurers: it is an ACTUAL problem for the uninsurable.  If this was not the case, we would constantly be reading stories of failing insurance companies in the US.  Perhaps you missed this, but they have actually developed the capacity to underwrite effectively.

More reaction ...
Krugman exposed to be flat-out lying:





> *Editorial Notebook: Dear Mr. Krugman
> 
> In our opinion*
> 07-28-2005
> ...


 http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2005/as-editorials-0728-editorial-5g27r1943.htm

And Donald Luskin tears him apart on the same (and other) lies:


> July 29, 2005, 8:39 a.m.
> *'Bamagate*
> Krugman does a Rather on Alabama.
> 
> ...


 http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/luskin200507290839.asp


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## loyalcana (29 Jul 2005)

> Nor, apparently, did you ask yourself how it could be that such a sub-standard workforce as we supposedly have in Alabama could win the DaimlerChrysler Top Quality Award for 2004 for the best performance by a Mercedes plant, worldwide.



According to the 2004 JD Power survey Mercedes-Benz cars ranked near the bottom in terms of quality.



> Um, yeah: what is confusing about this?  When Hyundai made the decision to build, they thought that there was more available (=unemployed) skilled workforce (= less training costs): when it came to actually staffing the plant, they found that it was not the case.  Instead of repeating Hyundai's mistake, Toyota looked for an available skilled, workforce.



Since however Alabama has a open labour market, Hyundai being a automobile manufacturer is relatively high on the labour food chain with fairly decent wages, good benefits, and relatively secure positions Hyundai should have been able to asorb skilled but lower paid workers from smaller companies. 



> The Canadian System DOES NOT cover everyone to anywhere near the same level as US insurers: this is why it is cheaper.  Period.  Actually, the only Canadians that have similar levels of coverage are those that have supplemental coverage purchased themselves or through their employers (but it's not a second tier).  For the mind-boggled, the realities of economics doesn't always reflect your favourite theoretical argument.  Adverse Selection is a theoretical problem for the US Insurers: it is an ACTUAL problem for the uninsurable.  If this was not the case, we would constantly be reading stories of failing insurance companies in the US.  Perhaps you missed this, but they have actually developed the capacity to underwrite effectively.



Why it is true Canadians do have to pay for uncovered health services such as dentistry or optometry, either though supplementary insurance or out-of-pocket, the total expenditures per capita for Canadians remain less than what the U.S governments pay per capita. Although that is a significant gap in timeliness and quality between Canada and the United States, it still doesn't explain why the US pays so much for it's health care especially when compared with countries like Japan which boast a comparable (some would say superior) health system despite having a higher proportion of public sector expenditure than Canada.



> Third, if subsidizing big business is Krugman's idea of the proper role of government, then he should have supported President Bush's 2003 program that adds a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. According to a story this week in the New York Times, which ran the very same day as Krugman's column, that program will â Å“give companies $50 billion in tax benefits to help with prescription drug coverage.â ? If such subsidies are so great, how come Krugman called this Bush program part of â Å“a golden age of porkâ ??



The prescription drug benefits applies to those who on MEDICARE which provides medical health benefits to the elderly and disabled. MEDICAID provides medical insurance for low-income earners. Thus prescription drug benefits will have a minimal effect on big businesses such as Toyota or Hyundai.


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## squealiox (30 Jul 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> And Donald Luskin tears him apart on the same (and other) lies: http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/luskin200507290839.asp
> 
> 
> > "Krugman cites no source for Fedchen's bogus remarks. But it's virtually certain that his source was a June 30 story on the website of the government-sponsored Canadian Broadcasting Company, which used near-identical language to frame Fedchen's claim that manufacturers â Å“had to use 'pictorials' to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech equipment.â ?



how about a link to a retraction from some of the mainstream media that originally carried these comments then? that includes the ottawa citizen and some others. (assuming this is anything more than a source regretting some intemperate remarks, a daily occurrence in the media world.)
a search on factiva turns up blank.
this luskin guy makes plenty of bald assertions, with a side order of name-calling, but still no "bulletproof rebuttal" in sight...


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## squealiox (2 Aug 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> And Donald Luskin tears him apart on the same (and other) lies: http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/luskin200507290839.asp
> 
> 
> > First, he claims that the supposed failure of Alabama's educational system is due to the state's voters having rejected â Å“an increase in the state's rock-bottom taxes on the affluent.â ? Rock-bottom? Hardly. Alabama's affluent are taxed at a 5 percent rate. *There are seventeen states with the same or lower top rates*, including blue states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Krugman's characterization is a flat-out lie.



before i forget, this is pretty hilarious too. last time i checked there were 50 states in the union. that would indeed put alabama in the bottom third.
a rich vein of similar gems throughout, but i gotta get back to work...


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## a_majoor (2 Aug 2005)

Luskin and Krugman obviously have some personal issues to settle, but read past the rhetoric in this piece and look at the numbers. Ask yourself which economy is closer to ours, and why:



> *French Choice*
> Krugman reaches for a silver lining among the shards of France's failing economy.
> 
> According to Paul Krugman's New York Times column Friday, "there's a lot to be said for the French choice" â â€ the choice to live in a decaying welfare state with no growth, no jobs, and no future, but plenty of free time on your hands.
> ...


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## I_am_John_Galt (5 Aug 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> a retraction from some of the mainstream media that originally carried these comments
> a search on factiva turns up blank.


As if that is going to happen.



> this luskin guy makes plenty of bald assertions, with a side order of name-calling, but still no "bulletproof rebuttal" in sight...


Actually, you are making bald (and mostly baseless) assertions: this is readily apparent with an understanding of the basics of economics.


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## I_am_John_Galt (5 Aug 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> While it may be an interesting law case in theory, the taxpayer foolish enough to attempt to fight the CCRA in court had better be named Bill Gates, because the Government has the resources and willpower to crush anyone else who can't muster up similar resources, armies of lawyers etc. It would also be difficult to fight a multi-year court battle with all your assets seized to pay taxes owing





> *Thought for the day*
> How can a democratic society maintain a tax court system where the taxpayer is guilty until proven innocent? How is it possible that this remains a sad reality in Canada?
> 
> The state can assess your income and send you a bill. If you don't agree with that bill, you must file a complaint. *The government will then take you to court, where they are not require to prove their case. The taxpayer must prove their innocence against an army of bureaucrats and lawyers.*
> ...


 http://taxpayersfederation.blogspot.com/2005/08/thought-for-day.html

Not 100% on that last part, but interesting thought, nonetheless ...


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## Britney Spears (5 Aug 2005)

> While it may be an interesting law case in theory, the taxpayer foolish enough to attempt to fight the CCRA in court had better be named Bill Gates, because the Government has the resources and willpower to crush anyone else who can't muster up similar resources, armies of lawyers etc. It would also be difficult to fight a multi-year court battle with all your assets seized to pay taxes owing  Wink



Umm, OK:

1) The case that we are discussing has nothing to do with the CRA, but with the power of provincial goverments.

2) Thousands of people  have fought the CRA(and the queen in general) in court, I've got 6000 pages of them(cases specific to the ITA) sitting on my desk. Lots of them win,  in fact, most of our tax law originates from or were amended by these cases. That's how common law works, in case you were wondering.



> The state can assess your income and send you a bill. If you don't agree with that bill, you must file a complaint. The government will then take you to court, where they are not require to prove their case. The taxpayer must prove their innocence against an army of bureaucrats and lawyers.
> 
> Of course, it's not the large corporations that get smoked in tax court -- it's the little guy who runs a gas station or a fast food stand. The government knows a big business has the resources to put up a prolonged fight, so they don't even bother.
> 
> ...



 ??? ??? ??? Where are you(not you, the guys who wrote this) getting this? For starters, is the author aware of the distinctions in the burden of proof requirements between civil and criminal law? Unless you are being accused of fraud, disputes between the CRA and the taxpayer are civil, so the comparision to terrorists makes no sense whatsoever. Are they talking about the proccess of CRA reassesements(which do not involve the courts at all), the prosecution under crimnal law of fraud,  about individuals challenging the legality of provisions within the ITA itself, or about the legality of goverments to impose new taxes?


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## squealiox (5 Aug 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> As if that is going to happen.
> Actually, you are making bald (and mostly baseless) assertions: this is readily apparent with an understanding of the basics of economics.



everything in that article either sidesteps krugman's points entirely or, as i have pointed out, bizarrely calls him out for telling "lies" that luskin's own numbers agree with, or for ignoring things he has clearly stated. in fact, looking thru some of luskin's other rants, he doesn't seem to have many more tricks in his bag than that. much sound and fury, signifying nothing.
as for my alleged ignorance of economics, you have yet to explain why you think: (1) alabama has suddenly lost the ability to add new skilled labourers to its workforce (high schools turn out graduates every year, you know) and (2) Toyota, the world's No. 2 automaker, lacks the "buyer power" relative to its rivals to attract those skilled workers. has alabama repealed the law of supply and demand?

oh, and btw, here's a part of that Fedchun "denial" that luskin somehow forgot to mention:


> International surveys have verified the average skill level of Ontario residents is one of Ontario's competitive advantages in North America. My comments taken in their total context were meant to highlight that quality and were not meant to disparage workers elsewhere."
> " http://www.al.com/search/index.ssf?/base/opinion/112141910081010.xml?birminghamnews?olet&coll=2


now isn't that nice and diplomatic?


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## I_am_John_Galt (9 Aug 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> everything in that article either sidesteps krugman's points entirely or, as i have pointed out, bizarrely calls him out for telling "lies" that luskin's own numbers agree with, or for ignoring things he has clearly stated. in fact, looking thru some of luskin's other rants, he doesn't seem to have many more tricks in his bag than that. much sound and fury, signifying nothing.


The point is that Krugman is ignoring basic economic realities to make a political argument.  The political argument is only compelling to those ignorant of the underlying economic structure.



> as for my alleged ignorance of economics, you have yet to explain why you think: (1) alabama has suddenly lost the ability to add new skilled labourers to its workforce (high schools turn out graduates every year, you know)


It is very simple: Alamaba has been operating at, or near, full employment for a long time.  The "Full Employment Rate" is generally agreed by economists to be 4.0%, which means that at any given time 4.0% of the workforce is either changing jobs or is too stupid or lazy to get one or be trained for one (whether this number is a valid assumption or not is irrelevent to the fact that it is the number that is utilized by the car company's economists).  Currently (June 2006), Alabama's unemployment rate is 4.4%: this means that 0.4% of the workforce is available to a new employer.  In Ontario, the June 2006 unemployment rate was 6.7%: this means that 2.7% of the workforce is available to a new employer.  Where do you think any given employer is more likely to find suitable candidate for employment?  I'll give you an hint: they are almost 7 times more likely to find them in Ontario, because Ontario's employment situation is so crappy (vis-a-vis Alabama).




> and (2) Toyota, the world's No. 2 automaker, lacks the "buyer power" relative to its rivals to attract those skilled workers. has alabama repealed the law of supply and demand?


What?  Do you know what supply and demand is?  Do you know what will happen to Toyota's ability to price cars where MC has been arbitrarily increased?  Do you not understand that it might be in Toyota's interests to minimize costs, rather than simply outbidding competitors for labour?




> oh, and btw, here's a part of that Fedchun "denial" that luskin somehow forgot to mention:now isn't that nice and diplomatic?


U-N-E-M-P-L-O-Y-M-E-N-T


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## Britney Spears (9 Aug 2005)

Since I'm here already, let me jump into the Toyota thing too. I spoke with a friend who was familiar with this stuff and the explanation was "Well, Toyota already had a whole bunch of other stuff nearby, so it only made sense to put the new plant there too.". Seems like a fairly reasonable explanation to me, I imagine any reasons given beyond that are proably just PR.  Are you guys perhaps reading too much into this business?


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## I_am_John_Galt (9 Aug 2005)

Toyota has had a plant in Cambridge, Ontario for +/- 20 years: they also have plants in Indiana, Kentucky, Texas, West Virginia, California and Hunstville, Alabama (where they make engines for the Tundra).  I don't think Ontario has any advantage in that regard.

Here's the GoC press release ... amongst the self-congratulatory platitudes: 





> The Government of Canada today announced it will provide $55 million in support for a new Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc. automotive assembly plant to be built in Woodstock, Ontario. *This will be the first auto assembly plant built on a greenfield site in Canada since 1986*, ...


 http://news.gc.ca/cfmx/view/en/index.jsp?articleid=158029

Which can be spun as a good thing ("hey finally, some new investment"), or a bad thing ("what the heck is the matter with our economy that we can only attract one new development in two decades of the longest sustained economic expansion in recorded history"): maybe I'm being overly-cynical, but I fear the latter is closer to the truth.


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## a_majoor (9 Aug 2005)

Of course, having Mr Dithers hand you a cheque for $55 million might make you see things his way as well... :rage:


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## I_am_John_Galt (10 Aug 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> Of course, having Mr Dithers hand you a cheque for $55 million might make you see things his way as well... :rage:



Touche, except that I'd include $55 million _of the taxes that come off your paycheque_...   :crybaby:


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## squealiox (10 Aug 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> It is very simple: Alamaba has been operating at, or near, full employment for a long time.   The "Full Employment Rate" is generally agreed by economists to be 4.0%, which means that at any given time 4.0% of the workforce is either changing jobs or is too stupid or lazy to get one or be trained for one (whether this number is a valid assumption or not is irrelevent to the fact that it is the number that is utilized by the car company's economists).



the only thing "generally agreed" by economists is that full employment means a jobless rate of anywhere between 2% and 10%, depending on the time and place.
which makes it all the more doubtful that a big auto company would decide to locate a plant based solely on a _single_ precise magical number like 4% or 3.9736% or pi or whatever you want to claim it is, and without regard to any other more obvious factors, including average workforce skill levels, tax rates and healthcare costs, etc.
it. just. doesn't. happen.




> What?   Do you know what supply and demand is?   Do you know what will happen to Toyota's ability to price cars where MC has been arbitrarily increased?   Do you not understand that it might be in Toyota's interests to minimize costs, rather than simply outbidding competitors for labour?



marginal costs are hardly "arbitrary" if they are dictated by the same market environment toyota's competitors are operating in. its big relative advantages in the labour market (eg, size, relative stability, etc) do not show up as accounting costs, in any case. a company like that simply doesn't have to do a whole lot of outright bidding to get to the front of the line.


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## I_am_John_Galt (10 Aug 2005)

Britney Spears said:
			
		

> Umm, OK:
> 
> 1) The case that we are discussing has nothing to do with the CRA, but with the power of provincial goverments.
> 
> 2) Thousands of people  have fought the CRA(and the queen in general) in court, I've got 6000 pages of them(cases specific to the ITA) sitting on my desk. Lots of them win,  in fact, most of our tax law originates from or were amended by these cases. That's how common law works, in case you were wondering.


I think the argument is about challenging the legality of an agency of the Federal Government operating in the area of exclusive Provincial Jurisdiction (constitutional issue): a far cry from individual appeals on tax bills (civil issue)!



> ??? ??? ??? Where are you(not you, the guys who wrote this) getting this? For starters, is the author aware of the distinctions in the burden of proof requirements between civil and criminal law? Unless you are being accused of fraud, disputes between the CRA and the taxpayer are civil, so the comparision to terrorists makes no sense whatsoever. Are they talking about the proccess of CRA reassesements(which do not involve the courts at all), the prosecution under crimnal law of fraud,  about individuals challenging the legality of provisions within the ITA itself, or about the legality of goverments to impose new taxes?


I sort of agree with you, but I also sort of don't (I'm not a legal expert: that's what we pay lawyers for).  As I understand it, the Income Tax Act (and other tax laws) falls under civil law, where Balance of Probabilities (vice Beyond Reasonable Doubt) constitutes adequate proof, and thus the 'standard' of proof is lower in tax cases than in terrorism cases, in reference to the article.

The thing is, tax cases in Canada are adjudicated by a separate court system (the Tax Court of Canada), where (as I understand it, and I remember INAL), CCRA has *NO* burden of proof and thus it falls 100% on the taxpayer (by default, if nothing else).  CCRA plays no role whatsoever (although will sometimes petition* the Tax Court for an interpretation of a particular section of the code_ prior to, or in the course of_, an assessment or audit).

The (perhaps somewhat overstated) point of the article is that criminals have the right to fair trial, etc.: CCRA can tax anyone at will without any legal grounds (yes, I am being a little facetious), and it is up to the taxpayer (alone) to prove that s/he is being taxed unjustly, which also assumes s/he can afford it.  Kinda talkin' out my you-know-what here (are there any lawyers in the forums?), but an interesting subject nonetheless.


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## I_am_John_Galt (10 Aug 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> the only thing "generally agreed" by economists is that full employment means a jobless rate of anywhere between 2% and 10%, depending on the time and place.



You are confusing government justification for job-killing policies with economics (did you just read a wikipedia article and accept it as gospel truth?).



> full employment: The condition that exists when all who want work can find jobs. Because some individuals will always be between jobs, full employment does not mean that one hundred percent of the workforce is employed. Rather, it is customarily defined as ninety-six percent of the total potential workforce.


 http://www.bartleby.com/59/18/fullemployme.html




> which makes it all the more doubtful that a big auto company would decide to locate a plant based solely on a _single_ precise magical number like 4% or 3.9736% or pi or whatever you want to claim it is, and without regard to any other more obvious factors, including average workforce skill levels, tax rates and healthcare costs, etc.



They are concerned with cost.
"Full employment" represents full utillization of the labour supply.
More skilled workers get higher first: therefore, when unemployment is very low, only the least-skilled workers are "unemployed" (ignoring the 4%): let's call this situation "A".
In a higher unemployment situation, there are more _skilled _ and unskilled workers looking for work (by definition), however we are more concerned with the former: this is situation "O".
Thus, training costs are higher in situation "A" than "O", because there are so many unemployed skilled workers in "O" .
Ontario and Canadian Governments have redirected money from job-creation (i.e., leaving it in investor's hands) and directed towards educating the workforce.  Thus, we have an educated/skilled workforce (a good thing).  Unfortunately, it also means that there will be no jobs for them until the more-business-friendly US locations near full employment, thus making labour costs of further US expansion prohibitively high (a very bad thing).



> marginal costs are hardly "arbitrary" if they are dictated by the same market environment toyota's competitors are operating in.


What?  This makes no sense at all. If a company chooses to pay more for a product than it has to, cost has arbitrarily increased (by definition!): a competitor could easily undercut that company's prices (i.e., by locating in Ontario).  I actually think that Toyota's excutives are not  economic illiterates.



> its big relative advantages in the labour market (eg, size, relative stability, etc) do not show up as accounting costs, in any case. a company like that simply doesn't have to do a whole lot of outright bidding to get to the front of the line.


What are you talking about?  Do you think that you have a better idea of Toyota's purchasing power vis-a-vis labour than anyone at Toyota?  How is this relevant, anyway?


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## squealiox (10 Aug 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> What are you talking about?   Do you think that you have a better idea of Toyota's purchasing power vis-a-vis labour than anyone at Toyota?   How is this relevant, anyway?



Toyota's OWN EXECUTIVES have cited the level of training and lower health care costs as reasons for their decision. I'm sure they have a whole lot of other reasons, as well. Despite this, you claim to know with absolute, utter certainty that Toyota's ONLY REASON for locating in Ontario is due to how its unemployment rate compares to an unknown theoretical number -- and a single one at that. i think i'll go with the Toyota execs on this one, thanks.


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## a_majoor (10 Aug 2005)

We seem to be loosing focus on the Macro issue of "How to make Canada relevant again". 

The power of the State is being abused to extract money from the taxpayer and "redistribute" it tocauses and players deemed "worthy" by a cabel of unaccountable politicians and their friends. In economic terms, paying the healthcare, training and a $55 million down payment on the factory costs to Toyota is not much different from funneling $100 million to, say, Groupaction. Investors who have chosen to invest in companies such as Daimler-Chrysler, or citizens who are donating to the "Green" party are also forced to make contributions to competitors, essentially undermining their own positions.

Since the "command economy" is being used to override the "market economy", this builds in economic distortions and has terrible long term consequences for all of us. If Toyota made the wrong decision locating in Ontario, do you think they will abandon a loosing investment for greener pastures, or come looking for more tax subsidies? How much money will be diverted from other potentially profitable investments in order to support a loosing one?

If Canada is to unlease the latent economic, intellectual and political power available, then people must be free to direct their energy and resources to where they wish, not where the PMO wishes, and to reap the benefits or consequences of their decisions. The "invisible hand" should not have to expend most of its energy arm wrestling with the "dead hand" of Stateism, we all can recognize productive outlets for our time and energy.

Finally, a historical overview of the roots of the modern liberal's obsession with the redistributive power of the State, you will be surprised (bypass the rhetorical flourishes):



> *Unintelligent Design*
> The origins and madness of Paul Krugman's economic doctrine of massive taxation.
> 
> One of the Left's sleaziest rhetorical tricks is to discredit conservative ideals by claiming they are based on religious beliefs, while liberal ideals are based on science. The Right, they sneer, is "faith based." The Left, they brag, is "reality based."
> ...



Moral force, or just plain force?


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## Monsoon (11 Aug 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> We seem to be loosing focus on the Macro issue of "How to make Canada relevant again".
> 
> The power of the State is being abused to extract money from the taxpayer and "redistribute" it tocauses and players deemed "worthy" by a cabel of unaccountable politicians and their friends. In economic terms, paying the healthcare, training and a $55 million down payment on the factory costs to Toyota is not much different from funneling $100 million to, say, Groupaction. Investors who have chosen to invest in companies such as Daimler-Chrysler, or citizens who are donating to the "Green" party are also forced to make contributions to competitors, essentially undermining their own positions.
> 
> ...


The article provides (unintentionally) an interesting overview of how the conservative movement was co-opted by the libertariian movement.  Traditionally, being conservative was about, well, keeping things more or less the way they are and respecting stability and social continuity above most other things.  A Conservative of a hundred years ago supported trade tariffs (they vehemently opposed free trade in the years just before and after Confederation) and would see nothing wrong in the disbursing of funds to attract business. A strong social welfare system (at the time provided primarily through charity and religious origanizations) was supported as a means of providing social stability.

As left-wing radicalism rose at the end of the 19th century, the conservative movement (concerned as it was with maintaining the status quo) began to define itself in direct opposition to the things the radicals stood for.  This was, at first, the usual "up-is-down, down-is-up" nonsense that fills the head of every first-year university activist, but it eventually coalesced around the idea of a strong central government providing an array of social services.  The conservatives opposed this on principle (it represented a change and was supported by their natural enemies) and found common ground here with radical libertarianism which was opposed to government involvment of any kind.  This anti-government slant eventually made it's way into the conservative Monetarist economic theories of such "thinkers" as Milton Friedman who imagined, in a kind of economic Darwinism, that market force was the only force that should guide the world and that any attempt to influence the markets was at best ineffective, probably damaging.

And on it goes, so that today we have a Conservative party that, if it had its way, would form a government and immediately end government social spending, end government spending on economic initiatives, end equalization payments to promote economic growth in undeveloped regions of the country and cut taxes to nothing.  Not to mention abolish the Senate and impose a sort of governance by referrendum system unprecedented in the history of world governments.  Doesn't sound like very much is being "conserved" to me.

The Red Tories that are much-mocked these days were, in fact, the last real Conservatives.  If you consider yourself Conservative, stop complaining about taxes and vote for the Liberal Party - that's your natural home these days.  If you want more money for the military, write your (Liberal) MP.  Otherwise you should willingly identify yourself as a radical libertarian and surf on over to www.libertarian.ca and join the party leader's brave fight against seat-belt laws.  There is no Conservative movement anymore.


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## squealiox (12 Aug 2005)

hamiltongs said:
			
		

> The article provides (unintentionally) an interesting overview of how the conservative movement was co-opted by the libertariian movement.   Traditionally, being conservative was about, well, keeping things more or less the way they are and respecting stability and social continuity above most other things.   A Conservative of a hundred years ago supported trade tariffs (they vehemently opposed free trade in the years just before and after Confederation) and would see nothing wrong in the disbursing of funds to attract business. A strong social welfare system (at the time provided primarily through charity and religious origanizations) was supported as a means of providing social stability.
> 
> As left-wing radicalism rose at the end of the 19th century, the conservative movement (concerned as it was with maintaining the status quo) began to define itself in direct opposition to the things the radicals stood for.   This was, at first, the usual "up-is-down, down-is-up" nonsense that fills the head of every first-year university activist, but it eventually coalesced around the idea of a strong central government providing an array of social services.   The conservatives opposed this on principle (it represented a change and was supported by their natural enemies) and found common ground here with radical libertarianism which was opposed to government involvment of any kind.   This anti-government slant eventually made it's way into the conservative Monetarist economic theories of such "thinkers" as Milton Friedman who imagined, in a kind of economic Darwinism, that market force was the only force that should guide the world and that any attempt to influence the markets was at best ineffective, probably damaging.
> 
> ...



the common ground between these two groups is their support for the capitalist system. but it seems to be for totally different reasons.
traditional small-c conservatives want to keep it because it has a proven track record of success. for libertarians, the appeal is its compatibility with their absolutist notions of natural law.
that might explain the greater flexibility that tories have traditionally shown on economic matters, and the inflexibility of the latter.

my $0.02


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## Monsoon (12 Aug 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> the common ground between these two groups is their support for the capitalist system. but it seems to be for totally different reasons.
> traditional small-c conservatives want to keep it because it has a proven track record of success. for libertarians, the appeal is its compatibility with their absolutist notions of natural law. That might explain the greater flexibility that tories have traditionally shown on economic matters, and the inflexibility of the latter.


Exactly, but my point was that conservatives have never (historically) been free-market purists.  They've certainly be capitalist as opposed to communist, but a Conservative of a century ago would be appalled at the proposal that we should just cut loose all market regulation and let things sort themselves out, whatever the social cost.  This side of conservatism is the relatively recent influence of libertarianism.

For instance, Milton Friedman (the conseravtive economist poster-boy) talks about the Great Depression as a perfectly natural and not-necessarily-bad thing - just the market correcting itself.  And it is perfectly natural - in an open and entirely uncontrolled market.  But can you imagine (say) John A. Macdonald or Disraeli supporting the social upheaval caused by the depression simply because it's "natural".


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## Zipper (12 Aug 2005)

Can you say Robo-cop or Blade runner, or any other bad cyber punkish movie/novel? What a totally free market may possibly do for you...


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## I_am_John_Galt (12 Aug 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> Toyota's OWN EXECUTIVES have cited the level of training and lower health care costs as reasons for their decision.


Yes, and you are claiming it took them 20 years to figure this out!



> I'm sure they have a whole lot of other reasons, as well. Despite this, you claim to know with absolute, utter certainty that Toyota's ONLY REASON for locating in Ontario is due to how its unemployment rate compares to an unknown theoretical number -- and a single one at that. i think i'll go with the Toyota execs on this one, thanks.


No, it is a simple argument that I will re-iterate for the 50th time: the single reason that Toyota is choosing to locate in Ontario is that it is *NOW *cheaper.  Uneployment numbers are _indicative _of the reason: they are _not _the reason.

They (and pretty much every other auto manufacturer) *have been choosing to locate in the states because costs *have* been lower there*.

The regulatory environment down there hasn't deteriorated meaningfully (actually they were offered a great deal of incentives to locate in the states) but costs have risen BECAUSE* labour costs are increasing due to increased utilization* (this isn't even advanced economics: the demand (for labour) curve has shifted to the right (which happens every time a new manufacturing plant is built) resulting in a higher equilibrium price point (for labour)).

>> You are claiming that that the Healthcare system in Ontario is lower cost AND that Ontario people are genetically superior (more trainable) AND that Toyota's executives (and that of every other auto manufacturer) are so stupid that it's taken them 20 years to figure this out.  Give your head a shake!


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## I_am_John_Galt (12 Aug 2005)

hamiltongs said:
			
		

> And on it goes, so that today we have a Conservative party that, if it had its way, would form a government


Isn't that what they're supposed to do?



> and immediately end government social spending,


 Is this on *Stephen Harper's hidden agenda*, because it sure is hell isn't in their policy declaration: 





> 59. Social Principles
> The Conservative Party is committed to a strong and effective health care program, well-funded post-secondary education and an effective safety net so that Canadians will be able to face the challenges of life at the beginning of the 21st century.  We will work with the provinces and territories to strengthen the social fabric of Canada to improve the quality of life for all Canadians but especially children, seniors and the disabled.





> end government spending on economic initiatives,


 Is this on *Stephen Harper's hidden agenda*, because it sure is hell isn't in their policy declaration:


> 27. Industrial Development
> i)  The Conservative Party favours reducing subsidies to for-profit businesses.  We believe it will be possible to not only reduce, but eventually to eliminate subsidies to for-profit businesses by focusing on improving overall economic growth through facilitating competition, improving productivity, streamlining regulation and fostering innovation in concert with free and fair trade agreements.





> end equalization payments to promote economic growth in undeveloped regions of the country


 Is this on *Stephen Harper's hidden agenda*, because it sure is hell isn't in their policy declaration:


> 22. Equalization
> Equalization is an essential component of Canada's nation building efforts.  The Conservative Party supports changes to the equalization program to ensure provinces and territories have the opportunity to develop their economies and sustain important core social services. We will remove non-renewable natural resource revenue from the equalization formula to encourage the development of economic growth in the non-renewable resource sectors across Canada. The Conservative Party will ensure that no province is adversely affected from changes to the equalization formula.
> 
> 33. Regional Development
> The Conservative Party recognizes that regional development policies are an important part of any comprehensive strategy to assist the regions of Canada to meet the opportunities of the new global economy.  Regional development agencies, like ACOA, WED, FEDNOR and CED-Q, must be de-politicized and focussed on attracting new private sector investments.






> and cut taxes to nothing.


 Is this on *Stephen Harper's hidden agenda*, because it sure is hell isn't in their policy declaration:


> 19. Tax Relief
> i)  A Conservative Government will provide immediate and long-term broad based tax relief, starting with reducing personal income tax rates and substantially raising both the Basic Personal Exemption and the Spousal Exemption under the Income Tax Act.  Reducing personal income taxes will hike the take home pay and raise the living standard of all Canadians.
> 
> ii)  A Conservative Government will reduce business taxes. Reducing business taxes would encourage both foreign and domestic businesses to invest in Canada, meaning more and better jobs for Canadian workers.  Lower business taxes mean greater returns for pension plan members and those who own RRSPs, mutual funds and common shares.
> ...





> Not to mention abolish the Senate


 Is this on *Stephen Harper's hidden agenda*, because it sure is hell isn't in their policy declaration:


> 9. Senate Reform
> i) A Conservative Government will support the election of senators.  The Conservative Party believes in an equal Senate to address the uneven distribution of Canada's population and provide a balance to safeguard regional interests.
> ii) Where the people of a province or territory by democratic election choose persons qualified to be appointed to the Senate, a Conservative Government will fill any vacancy in the Senate for that province or territory from among those elected persons.





> and impose a sort of governance by referrendum system unprecedented in the history of world governments.


Huh?



> Doesn't sound like very much is being "conserved" to me.


Can I suggest reading http://www.conservative.ca/EN/policy_declaration/ instead of just listening to the sound?


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## Monsoon (12 Aug 2005)

As you point out, there's a pretty big disconnect between what the Conservative party (and here I talk about the broad-based "grass roots" support, more than the leadership) has to promise to get elected and what it would like to do.  You ask facetiously if any of these points are on Stephen Harper's Hidden Agendatm knowing that the Conservative Party has done a pretty good job of making that phrase sound silly despite its factuality.  Nonetheless, you're on safe ground because Harper's done well at keeping his nose clean of overtly libertarian sentiment outside of his economic policies (post-"Alberta firewall", of course) and he's managed to keep the written platform more or less exactly the same as it was under the Progressive Conservatives.

_*Question:*_ Why do former Reformers/Alliancers support a party with a platform identical to that of the party they split from in the first place?
_*Answer:*_ Because the platform is nothing but a political expediency designed to get them elected.  It's a lie.

So in fact there is a hidden agenda in support of the points I mentioned.  Or maybe not so hidden:

*Social spending*:
Let me quote from Hansard -
_*Mr. Stephen Harper (Calgary West)*: Recently the Ministry of Finance released a document that showed our unemployment insurance program to be one of the most generous in the world. This can create serious disincentives to upgrade skills, to work and to move to find work._

*Industrial Development*:
The quote you yourself extracted from the Conservative platform says that they are opposed to business development: "We believe it will be possible to not only reduce, but eventually to eliminate subsidies".  They go on to say that their magical libertarian free-markets-for-all pill will solve the problems caused by this, but this is nothing but wishful thinking.

*Equalization*:
Let me quote from Hansard -
_*Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminsterâ â€Coquitlamâ â€Burnaby)*: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the member to carefully reflect on what he is saying and explain the underlying principle of what he is talking about.  Is there a perverse incentive to equalization? What is the long term goal? Should it not be to eventually get off such supports? Is he talking about more transfers rather than self-sufficiency? Should equalization not be gradually reduced?_
I admit that being an Alberta-based party makes it hard to support economic development transfers to non-oil rich provinces but, as you've shown, the Conservative Party has managed to ignore the wishes of its backbenchers enough to put some bland words of support for equalization in their platform.  It's important to reach out.  As long as Alberta gets to be considered a have-not province again: "We will remove non-renewable natural resource revenue from the equalization formula."

*Regional Development*:
Alberta Conservative "Senator-elect" Link Byfield should do the talking here: "The Maritimes would be better off without transfers, and so would all of Canada".  That's not an isolated quote, that's the title of an article he wrote just a year ago.

*Taxes*:
Ummmm: "A Conservative Government will provide immediate and long-term broad based tax relief".  They pad it out with some characteristically wishful talk about how tax cuts will actually increase government revenue but that is, again, more libertarian garbage.  I grant you that corporate tax cuts will do something to stimulate the economy (though consumption and personal tax cuts are demonstrated to have very little relative effect) but 10 billion in taxes doesn't equate to 10 billion in revenue growth. You can ask good old George "budget-suplus-to-500-billion-deficit" Bush about how well tax cuts work at increasing revenue.

*Senate*:
OK, you've got me there.  Although the grassroots would prefer to abolish the upper house altogether, the party leadership is willing to settle for fundamentally changing the nature and role of it.  That's much more conservative.

*Referenda*:
That's how "grassroots" movements are implemented: referendum after referendum after interminable referendum.  Gay marriage? Referendum.  Gun legislation? Referendum.  Decriminalization of marijuana? Referendum.  Petition with as few as 10,000 signatures? Referendum.  I'm not saying referenda are unprecented, but the sheer quantity of referenda proposed (what are our representatives being paid to do - run a polling service?) certainly is.  There's a phrase to describe that: "tyranny of the majority".


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## squealiox (12 Aug 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> Yes, and you are claiming it took them 20 years to figure this out!


it's been about 20 years since the last "greenfield" investment. that doesn't include factory upgrades, expansions or buyouts, which are much more frequent types anyway. investment is investment is investment.



> No, it is a simple argument that I will re-iterate for the 50th time: the single reason that Toyota is choosing to locate in Ontario is that it is *NOW *cheaper.   Uneployment numbers are _indicative _of the reason: they are _not _the reason.
> 
> They (and pretty much every other auto manufacturer) *have been choosing to locate in the states because costs *have* been lower there*.
> 
> The regulatory environment down there hasn't deteriorated meaningfully (actually they were offered a great deal of incentives to locate in the states) but costs have risen BECAUSE* labour costs are increasing due to increased utilization* (this isn't even advanced economics: the demand (for labour) curve has shifted to the right (which happens every time a new manufacturing plant is built) resulting in a higher equilibrium price point (for labour)).



and for the 50th time, i will point out the absurdity of reducing the cost-benefit proposition of ontario entirely to the least compelling of all possible factors -- the slim relative availability of unemployed labour. do you have any particular reason to assume the supply-demand curve (a thick, fuzzy pair of lines) has much explanatory power in a situation of 93.5% vs 95.6% employment, such that you can discard all other factors? or that there is no differentiation within the labour market? even though a whole host of far more significant factors has been repeatedly pointed out by the company making the decision, among others?
Even The Amazing Luskin has not attempted such a feat.

you would probably have a point if 20% of ontarians were unemployed. but they aren't and you don't. in fact there are plenty of sunny little countries a lot closer to alabama that have astounding unemployment rates and next to nil govt spending, which by your reasoning should make them ideal locations for a car factory.



> >> You are claiming that that the Healthcare system in Ontario is lower cost



it IS lower cost. case study: healthcare costs are one of the reasons GM and Ford took big debt downgrades this year. or is that another MSM lie, too?



> AND that Ontario people are genetically superior (more trainable) AND that Toyota's executives (and that of every other auto manufacturer) are so stupid that it's taken them 20 years to figure this out.   Give your head a shake!



now you've really gone off the deep end...


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## a_majoor (13 Aug 2005)

> Not to mention abolish the Senate and impose a sort of governance by referrendum system unprecedented in the history of world governments.



The Swiss will be very surprised to discover that government by referrendum at the Canton and State level is unprecedented. The main reason we don't see much enthusiasm here is the ruling elites were utterly defeated when they put the "Meech Lake" accord to a national referrendum back in the 80's, despite outspending the "no" side by a ratio of 10:1. Since letting the voter actually have a say in how things operate could derail Stateism, we avoid encouraging that notion anymore.



> They pad it out with some characteristically wishful talk about how tax cuts will actually increase government revenue but that is, again, more libertarian garbage.  I grant you that corporate tax cuts will do something to stimulate the economy (though consumption and personal tax cuts are demonstrated to have very little relative effect) but 10 billion in taxes doesn't equate to 10 billion in revenue growth. You can ask good old George "budget-suplus-to-500-billion-deficit" Bush about how well tax cuts work at increasing revenue.



You can read about the Laffer curve and see how raising taxes becomes counterproductive, or you can go back a few pages and find the posts showing how US tax revenues have exploded and the deficit figures are lower than expected this year. The increase in the US deficit is due to increasing expenditures by the US government, *not* declining tax revenues. (The "surplus" was a projection based on US economic trends, and the "Dot.com" market crash at the end of the Clinton administration made hash of those figures anyway).



> Alberta Conservative "Senator-elect" Link Byfield should do the talking here: "The Maritimes would be better off without transfers, and so would all of Canada".



Absoulutly true. Who should choose what to do with *your* wealth? You, or Paul Martin? You have personal goals to achieve with* your *wealth, Mr Dithers wants to use *your* wealth to maintain a lock on political and economic power in Canada for the benifit of himself and the Liberal party. If that is *your* goal, then make a political donation, do not ask/force the rest of us to contribute.


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## Monsoon (14 Aug 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> The Swiss will be very surprised to discover that government by referrendum at the Canton and State level is unprecedented. The main reason we don't see much enthusiasm here is the ruling elites were utterly defeated when they put the "Meech Lake" accord to a national referrendum back in the 80's, despite outspending the "no" side by a ratio of 10:1. Since letting the voter actually have a say in how things operate could derail Stateism, we avoid encouraging that notion anymore.


_Touché_ - you're right that Switzerland (unique in the world) is saddled with such a tyranny of the majority, which may explain why such a prosperous country is also so isolationist and xenophobic.  But surely you can't believe that what works for a culturally and socio-economically homogenous country with a population of 7 million sharing only 41,000km2, would be good for a country as physically and culturally diverse as Canada?  As you pointed out, it's impossible to build concensus by referenda in Canada.



> You can read about the Laffer curve and see how raising taxes becomes counterproductive, or you can go back a few pages and find the posts showing how US tax revenues have exploded and the deficit figures are lower than expected this year. The increase in the US deficit is due to increasing expenditures by the US government, *not* declining tax revenues. (The "surplus" was a projection based on US economic trends, and the "Dot.com" market crash at the end of the Clinton administration made hash of those figures anyway).


I'm not arguing that lower taxes aren't good for economic stimulus, I'm arguing that a $10B tax cut (even if it's made entirely in corporate tax cuts) will not sufficiently stimulate the economy to produce $10B of increased tax revenue. The dot.com crash came at the beginning of the Bush administration (though I'm not suggesting cause-and-effect) and started days after the massive Bush tax cut was signed into law.  The tax cut was designed to take care of the "problem" of the excessive surpluses that country would experience in coming years, based on ridiculously optimistic projections (which you seem to feel was Clinton's fault - I didn't realize he actually formed a part of the Bush administration) of the exponential market growth of 1999-2000.  That growth didn't hold, of course, and the tax cut proved (or will prove) to be a fatal mistake.  Just as the Conservatiove Party would like to promise tax cuts based on surpluses taken from a snapshot of Canada at its healthiest (after 12 years of Liberal rule) rather than accept that it's part of the ebb and flow of economic life.



> Absoulutly true. Who should choose what to do with *your* wealth? You, or Paul Martin? You have personal goals to achieve with* your *wealth, Mr Dithers wants to use *your* wealth to maintain a lock on political and economic power in Canada for the benifit of himself and the Liberal party. If that is *your* goal, then make a political donation, do not ask/force the rest of us to contribute.


I'm not going to argue the point directly because the case for equalization (which is really identical to the case for having a government at all) has been better-made by others elsewhere.  The denial of it is largely a matter of perspective.  My original point, though, is that the views you hold on the matter are not at all Conservative - they're libertarian.  Why do you not vote for the Libertarian Party?  And, if you truly believe that equalization is bad, why do you support the Conservative Party who's platform supports it?  Do you think that the platform is a lie designed to get the party elected so that they can then push their (yes) hidden agenda?


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## a_majoor (15 Aug 2005)

Actually I am quite open about being a libertarian (small l), and the main reason I support the Conservatives is they are clearly and openly advocating positions that are closest to my own (although not close enough). As a realist, I know that a Conservative government will only "tack" the ship of state in a slightly different direction, perhaps enough to avoid fiscal and social iceburgs, but still running in dangerous waters. If there are enough libertarian sailors aboard, maybe we can steer the ship a bit farther into clear waters. If there was a well organized Libertarian party in Canada, I would certainly support them.

My own plan is to run for municipal office in order to inject some of these ideas into the political debate; and if elected, actually implement them. The success of tax and spending cuts on the local economy should energize voters in other municipalities, and begin the long process of raising voter expectations and training a new generation of politicians to behave in fiscally and socially responsible ways (i.e. get out of our day to day lives).

Since economics is a descriptive science in the current state of the art (i.e. I know from multiple examples from history and across many different societies that tax cuts stimulate the economy and create new wealth, but I cannot predict how much new wealth will be created), I will confess the *magnitude* of the tax and spending cut effect is open for debate; what is *not* debatable is the fact that there will be a positive impact from tax and spending cuts.

Just a note about referendums, it was impossible for the elites to gain a consensus from the masses WRT Meech Lake. A similar fiasco happened in Europe just recently when the French and Dutch defeated the adoption of the "European Constitution". In each case, the elites were trying to pull a "fast one" on the people, who were finally able to respond because they had the tools available with the referendum. The Swiss model works because referenda are started "bottom up", by local voters raising petitions and getting enough support to place proposals before the local parliaments. Since the voters create the proposals and raise support, the level of consensus for laws put to referenda is already quite high. Finding enough engaged voters in Canada might be a difficult proposition, but not impossible.


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## Monsoon (15 Aug 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> My own plan is to run for municipal office in order to inject some of these ideas into the political debate; and if elected, actually implement them. The success of tax and spending cuts on the local economy should energize voters in other municipalities, and begin the long process of raising voter expectations and training a new generation of politicians to behave in fiscally and socially responsible ways (i.e. get out of our day to day lives).


I tend to support a little libertarianism at the municipal level - the less government down in the weeds, the better, and a municipality is small enough that consensus can be reached fairly readily by referendum.  Good luck to you.



> Since economics is a descriptive science in the current state of the art (i.e. I know from multiple examples from history and across many different societies that tax cuts stimulate the economy and create new wealth, but I cannot predict how much new wealth will be created), I will confess the *magnitude* of the tax and spending cut effect is open for debate; what is *not* debatable is the fact that there will be a positive impact from tax and spending cuts.


Agreed - unnecessary spending should always be eliminated.  It's defining the word "unneccessary" that causes the trouble.  When controlling spending, I tend to think that it's better to try to find efficiencies than make what are ultimately ideological decisions about what a government should and shouldn't be doing - that's a separate debate entirely.  For instance, John McCallum found $2bn last year by just poking around and knowing a thing or two about how to run a company, and now the government's trying to dig up another $4bn by restructuring the public service.  There'll be a hissy fit from the union and maybe customer service will decline marginally, but ultimately there's a lot of this sort of spending to be cut before we decide to stop spending money on business and industrial development.

Regarding tax cuts, here's a proposition I'm not sure I entirely support but that I'll toss out for the sake of argument: personal income, consumption, and capital gains taxes should not be cut until corporate taxes approach 0%.  Thoughts?



> Just a note about referendums, it was impossible for the elites to gain a consensus from the masses WRT Meech Lake. A similar fiasco happened in Europe just recently when the French and Dutch defeated the adoption of the "European Constitution". In each case, the elites were trying to pull a "fast one" on the people, who were finally able to respond because they had the tools available with the referendum. The Swiss model works because referenda are started "bottom up", by local voters raising petitions and getting enough support to place proposals before the local parliaments. Since the voters create the proposals and raise support, the level of consensus for laws put to referenda is already quite high. Finding enough engaged voters in Canada might be a difficult proposition, but not impossible.


You see "the elite" as being a wholly separate institution from "the masses" - I would argue that an elite is always the result of people coming together from the bottom up.  Ultimately when any project gets large enough it can't be entirely held in the head of any one person - the elite is the group of people involved in the movement that kown each other and know about their part of the movement.  It's just the backbone and spine of the population.  The trick is to ensure that the elite is an accessible one, and one composed of intelligent and reasonable people.  Canada's elite (I would argue) meets these criterias as opposed to, say, Argentina's.  The prime failing of the various People's Revolutions of the 20th century were their inability to replace the elites they deposed with better ones.  The new elites were even more grasping, closed and venal than the old ones and, worst of all, they didn't have the social connectivity to run the nation in an structured way.

I would argue that no lengthy piece of legislation submitted to national referendum would ever pass in a country as large as Canada.  Ever.  A grassroots movement such as you envision could never happen - it would have to be orchestrated if popular support were to rise from many parts of the country at the same time.  The orchestrators would, themselves, have to be a part of the national elite to pull that sort of thing off.


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## a_majoor (15 Aug 2005)

hamiltongs said:
			
		

> Regarding tax cuts, here's a proposition I'm not sure I entirely support but that I'll toss out for the sake of argument: personal income, consumption, and capital gains taxes should not be cut until corporate taxes approach 0%.   Thoughts?



There is a fairly sophisticated economic argument that corporations never pay tax anyway (the costs just get passed on to the consumer), and all benefits flow to the shareholders. Certainly the amount of time and effort that is spent in the corporate world in minimizing and avoiding tax could be better spent elsewhere. Many corporations are multinational, or at least have dealings with corporate entities and customers in other jurisdictions, so reducing corporate tax would have to be a regional undertaking at the very least, or business will restructure operations hurriedly to "no tax" jurisdictions with potentially detrimental effects on their own operations and to the outside economies.

WRT personal and sales taxes, they could be streamlined and lowered substantially as well. The guiding principle should be "a dollar is a dollar", rather than having complex rules to tax dollars at different rates according to fairly arbitrary rules of attribution (i.e. where did that dollar come from?). Certainly the time and effort expended in preparing personal income tax could also be better spent elsewhere.



> You see "the elite" as being a wholly separate institution from "the masses" - I would argue that an elite is always the result of people coming together from the bottom up.   Ultimately when any project gets large enough it can't be entirely held in the head of any one person - the elite is the group of people involved in the movement that kown each other and know about their part of the movement.   It's just the backbone and spine of the population.   The trick is to ensure that the elite is an accessible one, and one composed of intelligent and reasonable people.   Canada's elite (I would argue) meets these criterias as opposed to, say, Argentina's.   The prime failing of the various People's Revolutions of the 20th century were their inability to replace the elites they deposed with better ones.   The new elites were even more grasping, closed and venal than the old ones and, worst of all, they didn't have the social connectivity to run the nation in an structured way.



Given our political elites do almost anything to remain unaccountable to the voters, I would make a strong case they are disconnected from the masses.



> I would argue that no lengthy piece of legislation submitted to national referendum would ever pass in a country as large as Canada.   Ever.   A grassroots movement such as you envision could never happen - it would have to be orchestrated if popular support were to rise from many parts of the country at the same time.   The orchestrators would, themselves, have to be a part of the national elite to pull that sort of thing off.



At the risk of sounding snarky, that is a great argument as to why lengthy pieces of legislation should nott be crafted. Remember the American Constitution is essentially a two page document, while the proposed European Constitution ran to (I believe) several hundred pages and would have made a fine coffee table book. Which document do think is easier to understand and apply?


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## Kirkhill (15 Aug 2005)

Liberals, Conservatives, Socialists....useless bits of crap save only for convincing those too lazy to think for themselves to vote the way their ancestors have.

Conservatives conserve.  Liberals are free thinkers. Socialists think of society.  That is the origin of the labels.

Conservatives wanted to prevent change.   Others wanted change to occur.  In order to sell the notion of change it was defined as progress.  Crap again.  Change is change.  Progress - I haven't got a clue what that means.

By and large those interested in change succeeded in achieving change.

Unfortunately having achieved Nirvana they couldn't admit it for then they would be fighting to conserve that which they had achieved.  They would then become conservatives.  At the same time they couldn't admit that not all the changes they had called for were positive inter alia "progressive".  More change was required.  Resistance to change was conservative.  They activists that kept them in power demanded more change.  For whatever reason change must happen.

Eventually though there are fewer and fewer things that "progressives" wish to change, for they are truly the font of all that is good in the world, and thus more and more reason for "progressives" to conserve.  The "progressives" then start losing their driving forces, their activists.

Meanwhile the Conservatives, looking at the changes that have been made decide that some changes should never have been made and other changes were the wrong changes.  In order to improve, (dare one say "progress" if that concept isn't copyrighted), then change must be made.  Thus conservatives support change and changers wish to conserve and the voter is confused and goes to the pub.

The party labels serve only to keep ahold of a tribal base that has lost touch with even the party dogma and votes out of reflex.  Pavlov would be proud.

 :blotto:

Gawd its a miserable day and I'm in a foul mood.


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## I_am_John_Galt (15 Aug 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> it's been about 20 years since the last "greenfield" investment. that doesn't include factory upgrades, expansions or buyouts, which are much more frequent types anyway. investment is investment is investment.


Yes, all of those happened in the United States as well: they are indicative of small growth or recovery: they are not an indication of the type of new investment that greenfield developments are.



> and for the 50th time, i will point out the absurdity of reducing the cost-benefit proposition of ontario entirely to the least compelling of all possible factors -- the slim relative availability of unemployed labour. do you have any particular reason to assume the supply-demand curve (a thick, fuzzy pair of lines) has much explanatory power in a situation of 93.5% vs 95.6% employment, such that you can discard all other factors? or that there is no differentiation within the labour market? even though a whole host of far more significant factors has been repeatedly pointed out by the company making the decision, among others?
> Even The Amazing Luskin has not attempted such a feat.


Of course there are differences in the markets, but we are talking about macroeconomics and the fact that the Canadian labour market is not hugely differant that that of the US (although you don't seem to think so).



> you would probably have a point if 20% of ontarians were unemployed. but they aren't and you don't. in fact there are plenty of sunny little countries a lot closer to alabama that have astounding unemployment rates and next to nil govt spending, which by your reasoning should make them ideal locations for a car factory.


Unemployment:
1990: Alabama 6.5% Ontario 6.3%
1991: A 7.0% O 9.6%
1992: A 6.7% O 10.9%
1993: A 6.1% O 10.6%
1994: A 5.1% O 9.6%
1995: A 4.8% O 8.7%
1996: A 4.2% O 9.1%
1997: A 4.0% O 8.5%
1998: A 4.0% O 7.2%
1999: A 4.3% O 6.3%
2000: A 4.3% O 5.7%
2001: A 5.4% O 6.3%
2002: A 5.7% O 7.1%
2003 A 5.9% O 7.0%
2004: A 5.3% O 6.8%
2005: Ontario gets the Toyota plant because of it's obviously always been a better place to create jobs (?!?).

I will spell it out for you: pretty much every time the employment gap grows, Ontario's unemployment falls in the next period: the exception is when Alabama (and other states) get down close to 4.0%, in which case  the gap shrinks and Ontario's unemployment shrinks anyway (as the supply of labour hits it's 'cap' in Ala.).

The story is the same for other US states as it is nationally.  Canada does not have a more competitive labour force than the US: this is actually very well documented.



> it IS lower cost. case study: healthcare costs are one of the reasons GM and Ford took big debt downgrades this year. or is that another MSM lie, too?


You've said that our Stalinist healthcare system is so efficient that labour costs are lower in Ontario than in competitor US states: that's what your claim boils down-to. The last 20 years of history suggest that Ontario's labour is more costly as employment in Ontario lags that of the US, except when the US is operating at full employment.


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## squealiox (15 Aug 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> You've said that our Stalinist healthcare system is so efficient that labour costs are lower in Ontario than in competitor US states: that's what your claim boils down-to. The last 20 years of history suggest that Ontario's labour is more costly as employment in Ontario lags that of the US, except when the US is operating at full employment.



nowhere have i denied that we have many inefficiencies vis-a-vis the us. but my whole point is that it's not our spending on healthcare and education that is to blame for this. there's plenty of real govt waste out there, but it doesn't follow that all govt spending is wasteful or unnecessary. this much is obvious to most people.

(and btw, stalin was a vicious tyrant who was responsible for gulags, show trials, and the deaths and slavery of millions. please have the decency to not trivialize those crimes.)


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## I_am_John_Galt (15 Aug 2005)

squeeliox said:
			
		

> nowhere have i denied that we have many inefficiencies vis-a-vis the us. but my whole point is that it's not our spending on healthcare and education that is to blame for this. there's plenty of real govt waste out there, but it doesn't follow that all govt spending is wasteful or unnecessary. this much is obvious to most people.





			
				squeeliox said:
			
		

> and this gets to my main point: our govt spending is probably to blame for much of these bad decisions, but not EVERY AREA of govt spending. the biggest culprit is industrial and regional subsidies and other forms of protectionism, which do a lot of damage by distorting the economy.* some spending on healthcare, education, social safety net, etc., may well provide benefits that are more than negated by the costs of excessive industrial policy.
> the toyota case just happens to be a tidy illustration of this. it appears, among other things, the southern states just can't meet the demand for skilled labour as well as canada can* (and that remains the simplest explanation, pending any actual data to the contrary emanating from Galt's Gulch).
> to dogmatically ignore this distinction and robotically cry "suffocating nanny state" at every penny of public expenditure is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and is in any case unrealistic.



The point you've been making is that Canada _is_ somehow _sometimes _more efficient _because_ of our socialist system!  The fact of the matter is that the regulatory burden doesn't discriminate between destructive government waste of taxpayer resources and 'useful' government waste of taxpayer resources (whatever you imagine that to be: is that like PMPM's $55MM bribe to Toyota?): they are all costs that adversely affect competitiveness.   Companies bear less regulatory burden in the US than in Canada and thus are predisposed to do business there rather than here.  The _simplest explanation_ (is this your criteria?) is that the Southern States _can't meet the demand for skilled labour_ because their skilled labourers are_ already working_ *not * because of some magical taxpayer spending that makes Ontarians more trainable and employable at random intervals (which inexplicably coincide almost exactly with a short lag of periods of labour market is tightening in the US). Keep telling the lie enough and people will believe it, right?  Keep the faith: best healthcare system in the world!!!! Canadian helathcare is a model for the world (that has been copied by zero other countries and counting)!!!  Go Canada Go!  Stephen Harper's scary!



> (and btw, stalin was a vicious tyrant who was responsible for gulags, show trials, and the deaths and slavery of millions. please have the decency to not trivialize those crimes.)


He is also responsible for the USSR's extremely statist healthcare system (you know, the subject), which is comparable with that of only a few countries in history (i.e., Cuba, Canada ... even Russia's and China's healthcare systems today are less regulated than Canada's).


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## squealiox (15 Aug 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> The point you've been making is that Canada _is_ somehow _sometimes _more efficient _because_ of our socialist system!   The fact of the matter is that the regulatory burden doesn't discriminate between destructive government waste of taxpayer resources and 'useful' government waste of taxpayer resources (whatever you imagine that to be: is that like PMPM's $55MM bribe to Toyota?): they are all costs that adversely affect competitiveness.     Companies bear less regulatory burden in the US than in Canada and thus are predisposed to do business there rather than here.   The _simplest explanation_ (is this your criteria?) is that the Southern States _can't meet the demand for skilled labour_ because their skilled labourers are_ already working_ *not * because of some magical taxpayer spending that makes Ontarians more trainable and employable at random intervals (which inexplicably coincide almost exactly with a short lag of periods of labour market is tightening in the US). Keep telling the lie enough and people will believe it, right?   Keep the faith: best healthcare system in the world!!!! Canadian helathcare is a model for the world (that has been copied by zero other countries and counting)!!!   Go Canada Go!   Stephen Harper's scary!.



lots of exclamation marks there, but you have still not shown healthcare and education spending to be a net drain on our economy -- as porkbarrel projects or industrial subsidies undoubtedly are -- beyond merely labelling them as such.



> He is also responsible for the USSR's extremely statist healthcare system (you know, the subject), which is comparable with that of only a few countries in history (i.e., Cuba, Canada ... even Russia's and China's healthcare systems today are less regulated than Canada's)



then i assume you will have nothing to say the next time one of your mirror-images on the left invokes the name of a certain german politician...


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## Monsoon (16 Aug 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> There is a fairly sophisticated economic argument that corporations never pay tax anyway (the costs just get passed on to the consumer), and all benefits flow to the shareholders. Certainly the amount of time and effort that is spent in the corporate world in minimizing and avoiding tax could be better spent elsewhere. Many corporations are multinational, or at least have dealings with corporate entities and customers in other jurisdictions, so reducing corporate tax would have to be a regional undertaking at the very least, or business will restructure operations hurriedly to "no tax" jurisdictions with potentially detrimental effects on their own operations and to the outside economies.


Well that's the point of reducing corporate income tax rather than personal income or consumption taxes - to attract businesses and employers.  Even if the corporations are only technically Canadian, there are benefits to be drawn from the employment of lawyers, accountants, and financial industry specialists that thrive in tax havens.



> WRT personal and sales taxes, they could be streamlined and lowered substantially as well. The guiding principle should be "a dollar is a dollar", rather than having complex rules to tax dollars at different rates according to fairly arbitrary rules of attribution (i.e. where did that dollar come from?). Certainly the time and effort expended in preparing personal income tax could also be better spent elsewhere.


My proposal favouring corporate tax cuts was based on a chart related to the Laffer curve (I don't recall where I saw it - may have been the Economist, in which case it's likely to be reputable, or it may have been the National Post, in which case it was probably fallacious) that compared the economic impact (based on GDP grwoth) of various different kinds of tax cuts.  The numbers were the ratio of dollars of GDP growth per dollars of tax cut and went something like:

Corporate/Business tax: 1.2
Capital Gains tax:          0.9
Personal income tax:     0.6
Consumption tax:         0.3

Does any know where I can find a copy of that?  In any case, the chart shows that a dollar is definitely not a dollar - tax dollars are most effectively cut from corporate income rather than consumption tax.  There is likely a level of diminishing returns after which it makes less sense to cut there, but I think the money spent on a tax collection system that differentiates between different kinds of income (a cost measured in the tens of millions) is well spent given the resulting impact on the economy (a result measured in the tens of billions).



> Given our political elites do almost anything to remain unaccountable to the voters, I would make a strong case they are disconnected from the masses.


I wasn't thinking specifically about politicians (though they form a part of the elite), but in any case my point is that just about anyone who cares to can become a part of the Canadian elite - Mulroney was the son of a paper-mill woker from Baie-Comeau - whereas the elites of other countries are very inaccessible to the general public.  Accountability in an open system like ours derives from the threat of displacement - anyone sufficiently discontent who can do a better job of being the elite can become the elite.



> At the risk of sounding snarky, that is a great argument as to why lengthy pieces of legislation should nott be crafted. Remember the American Constitution is essentially a two page document, while the proposed European Constitution ran to (I believe) several hundred pages and would have made a fine coffee table book. Which document do think is easier to understand and apply?


Well, the fine points need to be worked out somewhere; the alternative is an invitation to confusion or judicial/administrative activism.  But I agree that specific issues should not be settled on a large scale by referenda.  "Do you support a strong federal government checked by provincial governments on matters relating to domestic issues?" Would be a good constitutional question to put to the nation.  "Do you agree that the Constitution of Canada should be renewed on the basis of the agreement reached on August 28, 1992 (see attached 150 pages)?" is not.  Even simple legislation ("Do you support the death penalty?") has too many surrounding issues to expect the general public to properly inform itself - that's what legislators are for.


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## a_majoor (16 Aug 2005)

hamiltongs said:
			
		

> I wasn't thinking specifically about politicians (though they form a part of the elite), but in any case my point is that just about anyone who cares to can become a part of the Canadian elite - Mulroney was the son of a paper-mill worker from Baie-Comeau - whereas the elites of other countries are very inaccessible to the general public.   Accountability in an open system like ours derives from the threat of displacement - anyone sufficiently discontent who can do a better job of being the elite can become the elite.



Politicians and "elites" are accountable in theory, but looking at our recent history, the "threat" of displacement is pretty low. A certain Mr Cretien funnelled tax money to a business in his riding, with the effect (to an outside observer) of using tax money to support the value of his personal investments. Despite repeated requests by members of the opposition, the press and (presumably) the public, he never produced *any* documentation that would suggest this wasn't the case. (If he is offended by this suggestion, he has only himself to blame). In Ontario, Dalton McGuinty ignored a law requiring the government to put tax increases to a referendum, and then rrescindedthe law (after the fact). I'm sure you can put up your own favorite example of political or other "elites" who refuse to be accountable.



> Well, the fine points need to be worked out somewhere; the alternative is an invitation to confusion or judicial/administrative activism.   But I agree that specific issues should not be settled on a large scale by referenda.   "Do you support a strong federal government checked by provincial governments on matters relating to domestic issues?" Would be a good constitutional question to put to the nation.   "Do you agree that the Constitution of Canada should be renewed on the basis of the agreement reached on August 28, 1992 (see attached 150 pages)?" is not.   Even simple legislation ("Do you support the death penalty?") has too many surrounding issues to expect the general public to properly inform itself - that's what legislators are for.



And Legislators are elected by the same people who do not properly inform themselves. An election is a form of referendum, but instead of having one issue on the plate, there are as many as the party platform(s) have listed, with many obscured or ignored and others only discussed in 30 second sound bites. I suggest a referendum on a single issue is probably more conducive to clear thinking and more effective in determining the "will of the people" than a general election. It also prevents politicians skating around issues the voters are concerned about; why do you think Dalton McGuinty struck down the law requiring tax increases to be put to a referendum, or why isn't a contentious issue like "gay marriage" on the ballot? The main reason is simply that the elites know they will not get their desired outcomes in a referendum (the lesson of Meech Lake), so refuse to use them.

A general referendum (Do you support the Death penalty), without qualifiers would set the boundaries for the legislators to work within. If a clear majority support the death penalty, then legislators must consider that option, while if a clear rmajority do not, then legislators cannot introduce it .


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## a_majoor (17 Aug 2005)

All we need to do is follow these simple steps to generate these economic numbers:



> *The Silence of the Bush Boom*
> The president has a good story to tell, but he must tell it.
> 
> Why President Bush seemingly gets no credit for the strong economy is one of the enduring political mysteries of our time. Some call it the "Goldilocks economy" - a term widely used to describe the low-inflation growth of the second half of the 1990s. More accurately, it's a non-inflationary boom where the economy is hitting on all cylinders and the outlook for the coming years is bright. In view of the ravages of the 2000-02 stock market plunge, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and skyrocketing energy prices, the Bush boom stands as even more of a great achievement.
> ...


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## squealiox (19 Aug 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> The _simplest explanation_ (is this your criteria?) is that the Southern States _can't meet the demand for skilled labour_ because their skilled labourers are_ already working_ *not * because of some magical taxpayer spending that makes Ontarians more trainable and employable at random intervals (which inexplicably coincide almost exactly with a short lag of periods of labour market is tightening in the US).



here's another bucket of cold water for that reductionist pet theory of yours:



> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4749347.stm
> US jobs growth at five-month high
> 
> *Despite the growth in jobs, US factories are shedding workers *
> ...


of course, it's the BBC presenting these facts, so they must be lies, all lies...


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## I_am_John_Galt (19 Aug 2005)

squeeliox: you are in over your head.


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## squealiox (19 Aug 2005)

I_am_John_Galt said:
			
		

> squeeliox: you are in over your head.


is that so? you claim ontario's ENTIRE advantage is a slack labour market while the US has full employment. but that seems not to be the case -- especially in manufacturing.

meanwhile, i am still waiting to see a convincing argument -- or any argument at all, in fact -- for the following non-sequitur:
"most public spending is wasteful (true) ===> therefore ALL public spending is wasteful."
do explain why you would assume away the existence of the narrow but very real effects of market failures (eg, assymetry of information, collusion, adverse selection, principal-agent problems, misaligned incentives, externalities, etc, etc, etc) that necessitate a certain amount of state spending and regulation, even though mainstream economists from adam smith on down (even including austrians like hayek) most emphatically have not made the same error. 
that, too, is pretty basic economics.


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## squealiox (31 Aug 2005)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> All we need to do is follow these simple steps to generate these economic numbers:



actually, the case for supply-side remedies is far from proven. in fact, according to this column that popped up on the bloombox the other day, the evidence is a lot less convincing than advertised:



> Are We Lowering Our Standards for Job Growth?: Gene Sperling
> Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- No one would argue that the 207,000 gain in jobs in July beat both market expectations and was a vast improvement over typical monthly job growth during this recovery.
> Yet, when it comes to the jobs numbers there has been a disturbing tendency among both commentators and the news media to start using the terms ``better than expected'' and ``good'' without distinction.
> It seems that everyone got so used to dismal job growth -- and even job losses -- in the first 18 months of this recovery that diminished expectation led many to cheer any report that was into six digits.
> ...


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## Infanteer (31 Aug 2005)

Let me guess, the next post will point to Gene Spurling as a moron.... :boring:


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## a_majoor (26 Mar 2006)

Canada has a similar political and economic culture to Europe, but we get a "slipstream effect" from bordering the United States which masks some of the self induced problems. Here is a look at Europe which suggests one potential way we could be going. Prime minister Harper is very constrained due to a minority government, so this session of Parliament isn't going to turn the Ship of State around, just change course by a few degrees.

Some of this is old news, http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/37454.0.html,  and the article conclusively debunks any attempt to uphold the EU or particularly the Scandinavian models as ideals to emulate, on the other hand, the hard numbers for Ireland are quite startling; anyone contemplating where to go should consider the Emerald island.

http://www.instapundit.com/  (March 25, 2006)



> BRUSSELS JOURNAL looks at Europe's economic problems: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/933
> 
> The reality of Europe’s ailing economy contrasts sharply with its economic potential and with the massive resources employed to cure its ailing growth. The whole arsenal of Keynesian remedies has now been tried and has failed one by one. Massive deficit spending throughout the eighties and nineties has left Europe with a public debt unequalled in history. The size of Europe's monumental public debt is only surpassed by the hidden liabilities accumulated in Europe’s shortsighted pay-as-you-go public pension schemes. . . .
> 
> ...


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## Zartan (26 Mar 2006)

While what the Irish have done has been truly fantastic, I wonder how the government could manage to establish a national flat tax (isn't Ireland a Unitary state?) - I feel the provinces would be the biggest hurdles in trying to achieve an economic liberalization. The Feds could lower their tax rates, business and personal, but it's still up to the provinces as to whether they follow suit - I would expect (you know me in this thread).


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## a_majoor (26 Mar 2006)

Zartan said:
			
		

> While what the Irish have done has been truly fantastic, I wonder how the government could manage to establish a national flat tax (isn't Ireland a Unitary state?) - I feel the provinces would be the biggest hurdles in trying to achieve an economic liberalization. The Feds could lower their tax rates, business and personal, but it's still up to the provinces as to whether they follow suit - I would expect (you know me in this thread).



Provinces which follow suit would expand their economies, while provinces which did not follow suit would suffer from a loss of jobs, people and investment flowing to the low tax jurisdictions. Even today, you can compare Alberta and Saskatchewan, which have similar climates and geologies and resources, but very different political cultures and therefore very different economies.


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## mainerjohnthomas (27 Mar 2006)

I get a kick out of everyone who points to Alberta's tax situation and claims its a model Canada should follow.  Alberta can do just about anything it wants as long as oil prices and demand stay healthy; its got oil money overflowing provincial coffers.  Give every province equivalent oil revenue, and then we'll talk.  As far as the Irish situation, they do not share the worlds longest undefended border, and airwaves with the US, so they have a population that is more open to approach things in an Irish fashion.  Our population is too closely linked to that of the US for our people to accept a different fundamental understanding of economic rights and responsibilities.  We may approach solutions differently than the US, but we are approaching the problems of today's economy with a similar understanding and economic model.  Our population will not accept any model of taxation that appears to favour or exempt the rich or large corporations.  In democracy, objective reality is less important than popular perception.


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## SeaKingTacco (27 Mar 2006)

Hang on there Mainer,

Speaking as a former Albertan, contrary to popular opinion, the secret to Alberta's success is not only oil revenues.  In the Early 90's, Alberta had nearly the highest govt debt ratio in the country.  It's growth in provincial spending, if left uncontained and expanded to today, would have outstriped even the so-called "windfall" from oil revenues today- which were not predicted when Alberta started cutting expenditures.

The fact of the matter is that, the Klein Gov't did the hard lifting by cutting expenditures when it was politically unpopular, but necessary.

Now, the Alberta Govt has zero debt (something it mostly paid off BEFORE oil prices spiked upward) and room to make decisions that other governments would love to have.  Guess what- they can.  IF they are willing to make the politically unpopular, but necessary choices, that Alberta did.  Ontario, for example, should quit making excuses about how the Feds underfund them at every turn and simply balance their budget and pay off their debt.  Funny how much more room a Govt has to make decisions when it is not being squeezed by interest payments.  

Cheers,


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## Kirkhill (27 Mar 2006)

http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/archives/4thedition/economic/resourceindustries/179_180

mainer - further to SKT's comments - here is a map from the "The Atlas of Canada" (admittedly dated 1970) showing all of those parts of Canada where oil and gas are likely to be found.  

It predicts the presence of Oil & Gas in:  Alberta - Found; Saskatchewan - Found; Manitoba - found; NE BC - Found; Mackenzie Delta & Beaufort - Found; Off Newfoundland and NS - Found.  It also predicts reserves off the Queen Charlottes, in Hudson and James Bay and their lowlands as well as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  

Setting aside economic viability for a moment, that is a valid issue, it is hard to explain Alberta's wealth and Saskatchewan's relative poverty as being a result of anything else than government policy when there is little to choose between the costs of extraction in Alberta and Saskatchewan.  In BC, when the NE field was recently opened up BC revenues have climbed and the province is suddenly in the black again.

In addition to SKT's point that oil was not always at 60/barrel, it wasn't so long ago that it was 10-13/barrel - a money losing proposition for the oil sands, Alberta has acted both positively and negatively.  They have succeeded by "making hay when the sun shines".  When there is a demand for what they have in the ground they sell it, make money and put it back into the economy and infrastructure.  They have even managed to tuck away some money (never enough as my retirement planner keeps trying to tell me) for the day when those revenues dry up completely.  When the demand went down and the revenues weren't there, they cut back on spending.  The formula is available to all provincial managers.

Does anybody believe that all the mining potential in Ontario and Quebec has been played out?  Or is it more likely that the decreased mining activity is because of government policy?  The hard rock mining industry used to be a major economic engine for Ontario.  It still is for Sudbury.

The demand for what Canada has to sell, if it chooses to sell it, is not going away.  It is getting stronger.


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## a_majoor (27 Mar 2006)

mainerjohnthomas said:
			
		

> I get a kick out of everyone who points to Alberta's tax situation and claims its a model Canada should follow.  Alberta can do just about anything it wants as long as oil prices and demand stay healthy; its got oil money overflowing provincial coffers.  Give every province equivalent oil revenue, and then we'll talk.  As far as the Irish situation, they do not share the worlds longest undefended border, and airwaves with the US, so they have a population that is more open to approach things in an Irish fashion.  Our population is too closely linked to that of the US for our people to accept a different fundamental understanding of economic rights and responsibilities.  We may approach solutions differently than the US, but we are approaching the problems of today's economy with a similar understanding and economic model.  Our population will not accept any model of taxation that appears to favour or exempt the rich or large corporations.  In democracy, objective reality is less important than popular perception.



Kirkhill already answered the relative distribution of resources question, so I will tackle the second part:

Canada may share a border with the United States, but our political, economic and social culture is quite different. We do indeed have a different fundamental understanding of economic rights and responsibilities, with the majority position being to demand "rights" of subsidization and "free" handouts, while evading responsibilities.

Our population, for whatever reason you might choose to believe, seems entirely disinterested in the fact (repeatedly brought home during the dying months of the Martin era, but quite evident throughout the 1990s) that our tax and regulatory structures DO favor or exempt the rich (some of them anyway, look up the Income Trust leak of 2005) and large corporations, particularly Crown Corporations and "friends" of the Liberal Party. You can probably report many examples in your province or municipality as well.

The overall thrust of the argument is not so  much "we're rich and you're not", but rather WHY some political jurisdictions become rich and others don't. To use a historical example, the Spanish Empire was literally sitting on top of a mountain of gold in the 1500's, at a time when gold was the currency of choice and mercantilist economics were commonly practiced, yet by the end of the century their status as a "Great Power" was clearly slipping and from which they never recovered. Their major opponents were England and the Netherlands, neither of which (at the time) had overseas Empires or access to anywhere near the resource base Spain did. At about the same time, the City-State of Venice, with a small fraction of the resources available to Spain, was able to face off the much larger and potentially wealthier Ottoman Empire. 

Relative to their opponents or other peer states at the time, England, the Netherlands and Venice had fairly liberal "free market" economies, as well as political cultures which minimized State intervention in economics and personal affairs. (Remember, I am talking about relative to other states in the 1500's, not today). 

The answer to why the Irish could succeed so spectacularly in the 1990s is not particular to Ireland, but universal and applicable to any society.

Canada is a continental nation, sitting astride one of the greatest concentrations of natural resources on the planet. Our population is well educated and we have the infrastructure of a modern, technological society, so by rights we should have the ability to be one of the leading nations in the world. In reality, we are perhaps the most sanctimonious nation in the world, who preach a lot while our actual ability to intervene in global affairs (diplomatically, economically or militarily) have shriveled to practically nothing. Economic liberalization would provide the financial horsepower to develop our diplomatic, economic and military abilities so we could walk on the world stage as an independent actor, and become relevant again.


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## Zartan (27 Mar 2006)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> Provinces which follow suit would expand their economies, while provinces which did not follow suit would suffer from a loss of jobs, people and investment flowing to the low tax jurisdictions. Even today, you can compare Alberta and Saskatchewan, which have similar climates and geologies and resources, but very different political cultures and therefore very different economies.



While to summarize, "it would make sense," you and I both know how these governments operate. When there was a call to establish a National Securities regulator, everyone but Ontario balked. Certainly a more complicated situation, but I believe many provinces would rather stick to the status-quo than some tangible improvement. Just my opinion, though.


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## mainerjohnthomas (27 Mar 2006)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> Economic liberalization would provide the financial horsepower to develop our diplomatic, economic and military abilities so we could walk on the world stage as an independent actor, and become relevant again.


     Our diplomatic, economic, and military abilities atrophied during times of plenty.  Economic liberalization could provide the financial horsepower to do great things.  It could also simply continue the current entropy at a vastly increased rate.  Canada has spent the last forty years climbing on its high (and rickety) moral horse and saying that we are NOT like the Americans, that we have lost all sense of what it means to be Canadian.  I disagree with some of the US foreign policies, but at least their govt has an agenda.  Our leaders, the true servants of our apathetic people, know that Canadians have no fixed goals for our nation to achieve, and thus only require enough military and diplomatic presence to make nice noises in the thirty second attention span of our "responsible" but lazy press, without alarming the apathetic body politic with the thought that we might be in danger of DOING something abroad.  Our public knows what its against, and it certainly includes trying hard.  Human rights are not worth fighting for, genocide should be denounced, but not actually stopped at the cost of discharging a firearm.  The world would just be fine if the US would stop doing things, and be more like Canada.
     The wealth of the Canadian economy has little bearing on the force Canada brings to bear in the world.  If our coffers ran over with gold, our public would still not support a strong military, especially one being used to enforce our political will and actually fix the problems it encounters.  The fault lies not in our pocketbook, but in our sense of identity.  If the Canadian people woke up long enough to decide that Canadian values require us to intervene in the trouble spots of the world, rather than simply disapprove from the sidelines, then we could build up a military and foreign service in a decade or two that would justify our claim to be a world power.  As our people appear to want nothing of substance, that is what their leaders give them.


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## a_majoor (28 Mar 2006)

Unfortunately you are correct insofar as our political culture is concerned. 

On the other hand, when you consider Canada's combined Federal, Provincial and Municipal indebtedness, and our unfunded pension liabilities are equal to about 400% of our GDP, there is another *VERY* compelling reason to embrace economic liberalization outside of providing economic horsepower to enhance our political and military presence on the global stage.


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## a_majoor (6 Apr 2006)

More reasons to keep driving nails in the Liberal coffin. Make sure you look closely at Provincial and Municiple govenments very carefully as well:

http://thelondonfog.blogspot.com/ April 5 2006



> *Cynical surpluses*
> 
> As William Robson noted in the Financial Post last week, the strategy of federal Liberal governments in the past decade of underreporting revenue to produce enormous year-end surpluses provided enormous political benefits for the government — *not the least of which was a general complacent attitude in the electorate that the government was managing the economy well as though revenue from taxes and monopolistic services were a direct function of economic well-being.* Two further political benefits were realized: first, fans of fiscal prudence were placated by the fact that much of the surpluses were earmarked for paying down debt without the government having to go to the trouble of antagonizing socialists by making significant debt repayment a line item in the budget; and, second, the government found itself with plenty of extra money to throw around to coddle protected special interests.
> 
> London city council has been learning the trade from their federal Liberal counterparts and reported a surplus of $9.8 million from the last fiscal year after reporting a $12 million surplus in the previous year. This being an election year, council elected not to commit itself to very many future expectations and used $5 million to retire debt. However, $300,000 remains uncommitted and rather than returning the money to its rightful owners, the city is entertaining requests for the money for the Children's Museum, the Palace Theatre, splashpads in the Pond Mills area, and the London TechAlliance — but not only for that portion of last year's surplus but for this year's projected surplus, according to the London Free Press. This raises the question: if city hall can already project surpluses, why is that additional revenue not being reported in the budget which was passed little more than two months ago? *Answer: as with the federal Liberals, surpluses at city hall are a cynical political tool. If revenue is not budgeted, the city cannot even begin to pretend that it is a legitimate municipal asset.*


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## a_majoor (20 Apr 2006)

The disease of Statism (most commonly expressed in a form of Socialism in this day and age) isn't confined to Canada:

http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow200604181516.asp



> *Waking Up to Hillary’s Big-Government Nightmare*
> In theory it will put Chicago to sleep; in reality it will sink the economy.
> 
> The ballroom was packed with a who’s who of business when Sen. Hillary Clinton addressed the Chicago Economic Club last week. No doubt about it, this was the address of a presidential hopeful. But unfortunately for Mrs. Clinton, the eyelids grew heavy as she droned on and on.
> ...


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## clasper (21 Apr 2006)

> The president spoke to us about his growth policies and priorities, such as ... maintaining lean budgets...


This guy has got to be joking.  The author just ruined the entire article by demonstrating what ridiculous rose-coloured glasses he sees the world through.  I've heard many words used to describe Bush's budgets, but "lean" isn't one of them.


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## Brad Sallows (21 Apr 2006)

Hm.  I didn't think they were only Bush's budgets.  They're Congress's budgets too, aren't they?  I'm not sure what passes for Bush's budgets - maybe something he hands to Congress, and then they hand back, with fattening adjustments? - since there is still no line item veto provision for the US president and he seems unwilling to exercise the presidential veto otherwise.  I admit I'm a little hazy on how the federal budget is developed in the US, and the exact point at which the various parties have input.


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## Centurian1985 (21 Apr 2006)

Arrrrgghh....head...aching....eyes...popping.....must...reach...for...beer...

ahh thats better....far too much intellectual thought going on here! must eject from thread!


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## a_majoor (15 May 2006)

Jared Diamond makes my points by inference; he gropes for examples based on "environmental issues" when they are clearly irrelevant, while ignoring the role of culture, organization and the belief structures of Western civilization:

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson042305.html



> *Decline And Fall*
> A review of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
> 
> by Victor Davis Hanson
> ...


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## a_majoor (14 Jun 2006)

The debate is continuing in "Small Dead Animals". As you can see when you follow the link, the crux of the problems isn't revenues, which are increasing in step with the increasing American GDP, but rather the increasing spending by an out of control congress. The "Porkbusters" movement is a reaction to this, and the reaction of some of the congressmen and senators to the Porkbusters would be hilarious, if it wasn't such a serious manner.

Just remember, the American deficit is coming down far faster than forcast, so if they could fix the *OTHER* half of the equation.....it would work for us too.

http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/004132.html


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## a_majoor (20 Jun 2006)

One thing ofter missing in economic arguments is the issue of "Stocks" as well as "Flows". Stocks in economic terms are essentially static forms of wealth, such as savings and real property, while Flows reffer to the movement of wealth through economic transactions and activities. We are most familiar with Flows, since we see it every time we make a purchase (the money just "Flows" out of your wallet), but Stocks actually outnumber Flows by a huge amount. Hernando de Soto makes this argument in "The Mystery of Capital" and "The Other Path", pointing out that the key difficulty in third world nations is the inability of most people to convert their "Stocks" into "Flows".

This is not to say we are in the clear (after all, combined debt and unfunded liabilities in Canada are equal to about 400% of the GDP), but adds another layer to the analysis of our economic performance. Another difficulty in the analysis is the fact that a great deal of the "Stock" in Canada is "owned" by the government (i.e. Crown lands), and so the value of these stocks are arbitrarily determined by the Crown, rather than by the market, and they are not easily accessable by the market or converted into flows.

Here is the example using US figures:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTFiMDlkOTlhYTVlOGMwMzFlOTNhMjZmZDVhZDUwNGQ=



> *The Financial Prowess of the U.S. Family*
> You can’t talk liabilities without mentioning assets.
> 
> By Jerry Bowyer
> ...


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## Cloud Cover (20 Jun 2006)

I thought debt to GDP was the better measurement when GDP also includes some intangibles such as the value of Intellectual Property? This would place the US even further ahead.


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## a_majoor (20 Jun 2006)

Debt to GDP is a fairly straightforward comparison of flows, I am just pointing out there are other factors at work.

Considering the ratio of debt and unfunded liabilities to GDP in Canada is something like 4:1, you would expect rational investors to flee in panic. Part of the reason they don't is the ability of Canadians to convert stocks into flows, since we have "de facto" property rights and sophisticated financial institutions capable of converting "dead" property into "live" assets (taking out a second mortgage is the simplist example). Like the earlier post pointed out, our assets should be greater than our liabilities, once stocks are taken into account.

On the subject of Intellectual Property Rights, this is an example of a stock which is rather easily converted into a flow (selling patents, getting licencing fees, royalties etc.). Because it is so liquid, the stock and flow values change a lot compared to traditional properties like real estate, which makes the economy as a whole far more dynamic.


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## Cloud Cover (20 Jun 2006)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> On the subject of Intellectual Property Rights, this is an example of a stock which is rather easily converted into a flow (selling patents, getting licencing fees, royalties etc.). Because it is so liquid, the stock and flow values change a lot compared to traditional properties like real estate, which makes the economy as a whole far more dynamic.



Yes, I agree, but also an IP right is a right to exclude all others from your property for a fixed period of time. Thats worth something right there. So if you have a good idea, and start manufacturing a product based on the idea, and can exclude others from using the idea, then the product is worth more than what profits are being derived, there is also the increase in the value of the market in which the product resides because you can charge what you want for the product- this actually takes the sting out of the supply/demand formula.

Take push e-mail or browser push code, for example. RIM paid 600 million to settle a bogus lawsuit arising from a biased jury verdict even after it had obtained all the necessary patents to control the market. As a result, they basically dominate the corporate e-mail market to the extent the market cap of the company sits at about 20 billion, but with the IP factored in the 20 bil market cap is far, far too low.  The biggest threat to RIM comes not from its domestic competitors, who must take care to not touch its property, but from patent trolls and competitors in a communist country which does not recognize IP rights in the same way we do.


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## Edward Campbell (4 Sep 2006)

This is not all about economics but I think it fits better here than in a new thread.

Here is an interesting essay from Thomas Homer-Dixon (U of T) published in today’s _Ottawa Citizen_; it is reproduced here – with my *emphasis* added – under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=b62abead-4e00-4fbd-8be5-8c5f22b50736 


> Defined by complacency
> *Canadians need to reach for greatness before we are trampled by history*
> 
> Thomas Homer-Dixon
> ...



While I think a _”vigorous national discussion”_ about Homer-Dixons hypothetical (but realistic, all the same) _continental security_ situation would be a colossal waste of time and talent, I do agree with his statement of the problem: unwarranted, self-satisfied complacency.

Homer-Dixon does not go far enough; we cannot hope to put aside our complacency and roll up our sleeves, again, unless and until we understand how we got here.  That’s simple: we were led here, willingly, in the ‘70s by Pierre Trudeau and a cabal of like minded petty, provincial poltroons who created and then sold us on a _*culture of entitlement*_.

Homer-Dixon, a well known Liberal partisan, whinges about our poor (non-existent?) performance on the world stage and, correctly, attributes some of that to inadequate armed forces but he fails to advocate a return to the *great*_ Liberal values of C.D. Howe and Louis St. Laurent.  Their vision and policies and programmes were explicitly rejected and torn apart by Trudeau at the behest of e.g. Tom Kent and Ivan Head.  (See:  http://www.mun.ca/2003report/honour/graduates/kent_bio.php and http://www.idrc.ca/es/ev-66571-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html )
_


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## a_majoor (4 Sep 2006)

> Let us identify a few areas of intellectual, scientific, athletic and cultural achievement where Canada can be a world leader, and then make it so. Let us establish a presence on the international stage by focusing our foreign-policy resources on one or two issues of critical concern to humanity. (A number of years ago, Canada succeeded with this approach by promoting an international treaty banning landmines.)



Unfortunatly, in typical Canadian fashion, he pawns the responsibility off on the government. Bureacrats choosing the "few areas" will be choosing according to criteria which maximizes their own power and influence. The Ontario government's funding of ethanol is a perfect example; despite the various claims of what ethanol will do it is simply a money and energy sink that will benefit very few people. 

It is telling that the one example he does bring up (the Land Mine treaty) is essentially irrelevant, the Great Powers have yet to sign on, and Those uf us who have served overseas are well aware that mines are a clear and present danger even today.

Over all lets just get government out of trying to choose the directions "we" are to go, and I think we will all be better off in the long run.


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## Brad Sallows (4 Sep 2006)

There's a simpler explanation.  Ambitious Canadians live across an open border from a country with which they share a language and much of their cultural background, and which has a domestic market larger by an order of magnitude or more in nearly endeavour to which one might aspire.  Australians are situated where their language and culture has them relatively isolated.  However, you could look into how New Zealanders feel about living in Australia's shadow.  You might find some similarities to Canada.


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## Edward Campbell (5 Jun 2007)

When he stays in his lanes the _Globe and Mail_'s Jeffrey Simpson is well worth a read.  Here he is, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today's _Globe_, on an important topic: *what's wrong with Canada?  Why does this country consistently aim to be mediocre?*

 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070605.COSIMP05/TPStory/TPComment/?query=


> Corporate Canada, proud and ... parochial
> 
> JEFFREY SIMPSON
> 
> ...



I have only read excerpts from Mandel-Campbell's book – a couple of fairly long ones but excerpts all the same, and I haven't finished Andrew Cohen's _Unfinished Canadian_ which many recommend should be read in tandem with _Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson_.

The litany of policy failures – driven I hasten to point out by Canadians' firmly expressed desires – highlighted by Simpson are real: _'... supply management, a social welfare fishery, unemployment benefits (10 weeks work for 42 weeks of benefits) ... corporate taxes and excessive regulations.'_ and _'... carving up revenues between federal and provincial governments, beseeching governments for more industrial subsidies, worrying obsessively about the United States, pouring money into equalization and health care, and avoiding even the word "productivity."'_  Canadians want – at election time they *demand* -these muddle headed, destructive _policies_.

Why?

I can only conclude that our national character is mean, niggardly, timorous and driven by greed and envy (the latter two characteristics focused, now, on the USA – we want everything we see in America but we are unwilling to take risks and work).

The fact is that Prime Minister Harper's efforts to give Canada some international _lustre_ are likely doomed to failure unless and until Canadians, not business leaders, not politicians, not the _commentariat_ and chattering classes, but _ordinary_ Canadians, grow up and shake off the socialistic claptrap and rubbish which is the legacy of Pierre Trudeau.  Yes the _great Depression_ was, without doubt, the most _defining_ event in modern Canadian history.  Yes the depression's effects were exacerbated by stupid, greedy industrialists and bankers.  No, Trudeau neither understood the problem nor did he offer any useful solutions – unless you think Fidel Castro has policies we ought to emulate.  (If you do then you are too stupid to breathe unaided!)

We need to reform ourselves, not just our business CEOs, if we want to leave a country to our grandchildren, much less make it relevant again.


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## Kirkhill (5 Jun 2007)

Edward, I am having trouble getting my 20 year old son out of the house.  I am told by "those who know" that this isn't unusual and that the government has officially moved the age of youthdom upwards from 19 years old to 29 year old.  Effectively I am told to stop worrying about him leaving the house until he is 30.....or my wallet gets too skinny.

Flashback to the 1930s in Canada.  My Father-in-law from Willow Bunch Saskatchewan started riding the rails, working in lumber camps and fish plants when he was 16.
He was one of 13 kids (I think - kind of lose track of all the wife's relatives).

The difference between the two teens?  One has no reason to leave.  The other had no reason to stay.

I don't think you can change peoples' attitudes until the choices are stark.   And right now - life is purty comfortable.


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## a_majoor (6 Jun 2007)

I am reading the latest book by Samuel Huntington: *Who Are We?*; which is about America's identity. While I have only read Part 1 so far, the theme seems to be America has a solid national identity and sense of what it means to be American. This is much different from most other nations since it is a form of Civic Nationalism; people who agree with the tenants of the American Creed are welcome to come to the United States and make themselves Americans.

The Creed has profound historical roots based on the values the settlers brought to the New World in the 16 and 1700's, and is particularistic, being based on the forms of civic governance, ideas of common and natural law and Dissenting Protestantism that were prevalent _at that time and place_. This particularism also explains why other British colonies like Canada and Australia do not resemble America.

It would be interesting to examine the historical roots of modern Canada (I don't think we can really trace too much back to the Vikings or New France) and see what common values our settlers brought, and why they were too weak to be retained or adopted by later immigrants.


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## nihilpavor (6 Jun 2007)

Identity to a nationality is usually created with the propagation of stories and myth which in turn tend to lead to nationalism. There are many kind of nationalism but it is nonetheless one of the most dangerous double-edged sword around. It can be a nice tool to shore up a country's spirit, it can make everybody dance on the same tune and give motivations to get through hard times. But basically most nationalism eventually come down to this: we are better than anybody else, we 'x'ians are the best on the planet and we're always right, etc etc. 

The Germans tried that a while back, as well as the Japanese and it turned ugly. Post 9/11 showed the best and the worst of US nationalism. They all rallied at once behind their country and government to overcome the adversity but then they lost all common sense when that same government lied its way into the illegal invasion of another country. Closer, Quebecers created themselves an heroic / oppressed past in order to stir some homegrown nationalism and we all remember how that turned out.

One of the problem I see with common values brought by our settlers is that they aren't that common (language wise, religion wise, etc) and that we haven't really been a true independent country until the Statute of Westminster of 1931. Since then, regardless of WWII, the rest of the country's history has mostly been about linguistic and constitutional fights.

Americans are proud of their constitution and bill of rights. We, on the other hand, are left with a confuse constitution that everybody wants to reform but we just can't agree with each other to do it once and for all. Where's the pride in that? Where's the common identity?


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## RDBZ (6 Jun 2007)

a_majoor said:
			
		

> The Creed has profound historical roots based on the values the settlers brought to the New World in the 16 and 1700's, and is particularistic, being based on the forms of civic governance, ideas of common and natural law and Dissenting Protestantism that were prevalent _at that time and place_. This particularism also explains why other British colonies like Canada and Australia do not resemble America.



From a global perspective though, there are perhaps many more similarities between the three countries than differences.




			
				a_majoor said:
			
		

> It would be interesting to examine the historical roots of modern Canada (I don't think we can really trace too much back to the Vikings or New France) and see what common values our settlers brought, and why they were too weak to be retained or adopted by later immigrants.



Here the Canadian experience seems to differ to the Australian, where a substantial part of the modern day psyche can be traced back to its earlier arrivals.


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## Kirkhill (6 Jun 2007)

Nihilpavor - I agree that we are influenced by myths.  I also agree that myths can be created, inculcated and employed to weld people together.  I further stipulate that once people are welded together it makes it easier for a single individual to move the entire mass (given a long enough lever and a place to stand).

However nationalism is to nation as islamism is to islam.  Both nations and Islam exist without the assitance of the extremists.  Nation and Religion are both expressions of culture and culture is taught on mother's knee.  Along with the most common expression of culture, the mother tongue, religion and national myths are passed on within the family.  Just take a look at how many people consider themselves Christians in Canada but never go to Church.  Or look at Americans and ask them about George Washington, or Scots and ask them about Burns and Wallace and The Bruce, or the French and ask them about Napoleon and Joan of Arc.  The first place a child learns about these people is at home, not at school or on the TV.  And they don't learn the exact truth or dogma.  They learn it as the family filters it and changes it.

But there is enough of a common thread in the tales that two people hearing tales their mother told them from the mouth of some other mother's son gives them a sense of connectivity.  A sense of family.

And that is a natural phenomenon.  

People that do not share the same touchstones ARE the other because their stories are not our stories.  

The more touchstones in common that people share then the greater the sense of family and the greater willingness to trust because you are more likely to be able to predict the reaction of the other. This allows you to steer away from contentious issues (and there are fewer in any event).  If you can't predict the reaction then caution is warranted because the reaction might be hazardous to your health.

Back to Kipling's Stranger:



> "The Stranger within my gate,
> He may be true or kind,
> But he does not talk my talk-
> I cannot feel his mind.
> ...



I don't agree with Kipling's solution - segregation - but I do agree with his analysis of the problem.

Interestingly the only solution to "native culture" seems to be that propounded by church, school and the CBC, Pope Pius XI, Marx, Goebels and Trudeau.  Propagandizing some would call it.

I think our problem is related to "tolerance" and "forgiveness".  As heirs of the Enlightenment (and I will be parochial and stipulate the Scots version) we have been taught that it is good to tolerate the other, to find common ground and not see the other as the other.   We can't even see ourselves as better because we are tolerant because then we are still seeing them as other.  

So we are stuck.  We are better because we are tolerant but because we are tolerant we are not better.  There is no difference between US and Them.  From that it follows that there is no need for us to change because all things are equal and for the same reason there is no need to change others because they are already the same as us.

Of course, in the Canadian context all this falls apart when we consider the Americans.  Everybody knows that while we are not better than them (we can't be because everybody is the same) they are worse than us (they must be because they are Americans   )


----------



## nihilpavor (6 Jun 2007)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> Nation and Religion are both expressions of culture and culture is taught on mother's knee.  Along with the most common expression of culture, the mother tongue, religion and national myths are passed on within the family.



I hear what you say.

What I learned on my mother's knee: French. All religions are bad, Buddhism being the only exceptions. Everybody in Canada and the US living between Vancouver and Toronto are dangerous rednecks, steer clear of them. We, people of Quebec, have been exploited by the English since the invasion and we need to get our own country ("le Québec libre") recognized. Capitalism is too extreme to be any good and it only serves as an excuses for generalized exploitation. The Canadian army sees French Canadians as cannon fodder. The Canadian army is the enemy that was so happy to come hit us in the guts during the FLQ crisis... I could say a lot more in this line. Two solitudes really. 

Hopefully I am a very curious individual always wiling to reconsider what I was taught as the Truth. But sadly, a lot of people are not willing to go through the pain that comes with questioning who you are and what you believe in. Elevating above the "blame game" is a tough ride in troubled times.


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## a_majoor (8 Jun 2007)

RDBZ said:
			
		

> From a global perspective though, there are perhaps many more similarities between the three countries than differences.



True, there are enough similarities between many parts of the former British Empire that many people believe in a collective "Anglosphere" of common languages, cultures and values. I am certainly a proponent of such an idea, but the foundational influences of the American settlers were rather particular to that time and place, and I think that one reason Canada and Australia don't resemble the United States more is the forms of civic governance, ideas of common and natural law and Dissenting Protestantism had changed by the late 1700's and early 1800's, when Canada and Australia took their modern shapes as nations.

One thing which Huntington is getting at as I read farther into the book is the current influx of peoples coming to North America have more of the hallmarks of _settlers _ rather than _immigrants_. They come en mass, _communities_ with relatively fixed ideas about how they should live and act and what they intend to accomplish (immigrants tend to arrive more as individuals who are willing and able to adapt to the host culture). given the scale and scope of Hispanic "settlement" in the United States and various groups coming to Canada, these new settlers have the potential to remake society in "their" image. 

The United States is defined by the American Creed, and may have the cultural strength and resiliance to continue to be "America" for a long time to come. On the other hand, Canada does not have the hard core of a "Creed", and many of the other symbols and ideas of nationalism were wantonly vandelized during the 1960's on to make way for a new "Progressive" Canada. Since Progressivism is a weak ideology, there is a far better chance for it to be displaced by the firmer systems of believes these new settlers will import to Canada. Calls for Shiara law to be adopted in Ontario were a sign of what is to come.


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## Kirkhill (9 Jun 2007)

Arthur, there is a great book called "Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America" that addresses that very issue.  It points out that there were four distinct waves of immigration from four distinct cultural groups in different parts of Britain.  They brought with them their beliefs, their dialects, their clothing, their food, their housing and their social and marriage practices and sexual attitudes.

The Puritans came from East Anglia to New England before the Civil Wars. (1620-1640)
The Royalists came from Wessex to Tidewater Virginia during Cromwell's reign (1640-1660)
The Dissidents, Non-Conformists and Quakers came from the Midlands to Pennsylvania (1660-1690)
The Hoosiers, Crackers and Hillbillies came from Ulster and the Border Region between Scotland and England starting about 1716 with the failure of the Old Pretender's rebellion.
This last group, my uncouth relatives that were rustling sheep, cattle and horses before they got here were wearing buckskins, living in cabins and drinking whisky, were the back bone of the American Revolution along with the refugees from Louis XIV and Louis XV - the Palatine Germans and the Huguenots.

Canada got the middle class lowland Scots - Anglicans, Presbyterians and Masons and all disciples of Adam Smith - authoritarian conformists with a view to making a Godly profit - as the backbone of its mercantile class.  It also got Highland Scots that were cleared from their lands by their own clansmen - sheep cost less to maintain than crofters.  New Zealand got the same mix.

And Australia? As Trooper Hale and Cobbler will attest - nothing but Irish poachers and Ne'er do wells.  They had to introduce the rabbits to make the Irishmen feel at home.


----------



## Edward Campbell (21 Jun 2007)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _National Post_, is a ‘good news’ article which supports the recent Department of Finance reports debunking the ‘Canada is being “hollowed out” myth’:

 http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=66dd82fc-5ec1-487f-803f-701573675d20&k=14640


> Canada a creditor by 2010?
> *Would mark first time that country's foreign assets outweigh liabilities*
> 
> Jacqueline Thorpe, Financial Post
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (23 Jun 2007)

While this is good news, we should hold off opening the champaign just yet.

Canada's surge is based almost entirely on resources, so anything which pops the resource bubble will take the rug out from under us. Don't forget the Americans have a very compelling reason to find a substitute for imported oil, while the underpinnings of the electronic universe (computer chips and fiber optics) are, in the end, made out of sand. Should the United sStates find an acceptable means of substituting foreign oil, the global oil market will crash (since a $100 billion dollar a year market will abruptly close and other large oil importers like India and China will rapidly copy whatever the Americans come up with). 

The other factor which casts a shadow over the good news is the acummulated government debt (something like $500 billion dollars worth at the Federal level alone), along with the vast unfunded liabilities of future pension obligations (see http://www.td.com/economics/special/db1206_debt.jsp for some insight into this subject). Personal savings are at an all time low as well, which could lead to multiple market crashes if large numbers of people needed to liquidate assets like houses or property in order to raise cash. Coupled with the failure of Canadian business to actively invest in the future with new machinery and equipment, we are still balancing on a knife edge.

Of course knowing what the problems are we can work on fixing them, and the acummulating foreign assets "could" be used to pay off some of the overhanging obligations that loom ahead of us. We seem to be doomed to deal with spendthrift governments, so on a personal level, the reader can increase their personal savings, and look carefully at any Canadian business they choose to patronise or invest in. Supporting the ones that do invest in the future will have long term benefits to both the business and investor. Diversification and holding assets in other markets is also a "must do".

Roll up your sleeves Canada!


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## a_majoor (13 Jan 2008)

A bit more about Canadian parochialism:

http://edeysblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/if-tree-fell-on-politician-would-anyone.html



> *if a tree fell on a politician would anyone care?*
> 
> Economy in crisis! But, what would a Canadian pseudo-crisis be without a First Ministers meeting to offer at best non-solutions, if not actively make the problem worse. Exacerbated by panic-laden reporting (e.g. "The big economic question these days is whether the weakening [American] economy will survive the strains or collapse under them." Collapse?) our intrepid Premiers have descended upon 24 Sussex to take action, or more accurately to give a credible impression of taking action.
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (15 Jan 2008)

We didn't have to wait too long for this:

http://kerplonka.blogspot.com/2008/01/someone-mentioned-d-word.html



> *Someone mentioned the D-word
> *
> The word being "deficit".
> 
> ...



Of course the group does not care to notice that economic activity and government revenues increase after tax cuts (quick historical examples include the "Roaring 20's, Go Go 60's and "Morning in America"). It should also be noted that steep economic downturns at the end of these periods were always preceded (or perhaps caused by) tax increases or other government intervention in the economy.


----------



## a_majoor (15 Jan 2008)

More on taxes by Jerry Pournelle:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view500.html



> There is a good discussion of the Huckabee "Fair Tax" in today's TCS Daily. http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010808A Arnold King (Cato Institute) looks at the effects on both revenue and "fairness" and presents data on the present situation in a calm and comprehensible analysis. He concludes that what we need is a "Semi-Fair Tax" that combines some "progressive" income tax features with a sales tax.
> 
> *I note that if we want you not to do something -- don't speed, for example, and if you do speed don't really cut loose and rip -- we fine you. Progressive fines for multiple offenses and more severe expenses, and such like. So if you improve your house, we fine you by raising your taxes; and if you make more money, we fine you by increasing your income tax. If you save money, we fine you by taxing the interest income.
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (20 Feb 2008)

Why Alberta is surging ahead and Ontario isn't:

http://freedomnation.blogspot.com/2008/02/lets-do-time-warp-again.html




> Wednesday, February 20, 2008
> Let's do the time warp again
> 
> Generally I don’t bother giving blame when these little moments of cross government spitting contests breaks out. Yet this time around, my provincial government pissed me off a lot more than my federal government.
> ...


----------



## RangerRay (21 Feb 2008)

> He praised the B.C. government, which said on Tuesday it will reduce business taxes.



...and they instituted a carbon tax!

 :rage: :rage: :rage:


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## Yrys (21 Feb 2008)

RangerRay said:
			
		

> ...and they instituted a carbon tax!



huh? How is it working ? Seems difficult to administer, a thing like that!


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## RangerRay (21 Feb 2008)

Yrys said:
			
		

> huh? How is it working ? Seems difficult to administer, a thing like that!



They just brought it in yesterday.  Will increase the price of gas 2.4 cents/liter in June, and will be raised to 7.2 cents/liter by 2012.

Just as the Feds try to solve Toronto's problems with nation-wide legislation, the BC gov't is going to try to solve Vancouver's problems with province-wide legislation.

Idgits!  Every single one of them!


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## xo31@711ret (21 Feb 2008)

...and they instituted a carbon tax!

So...that'll make how much % of tax on athe price of litre of gas ? And what of those who heat their homes with home heating fuel?


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## RangerRay (21 Feb 2008)

xo31@711ret said:
			
		

> ...and they instituted a carbon tax!
> 
> So...that'll make how much % of tax on athe price of litre of gas ? And what of those who heat their homes with home heating fuel?



IIRC, the carbon tax will also apply to natural gas and heating oil.


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## I_am_John_Galt (25 Feb 2008)

A propos of nothing recent in this thread, an interesting article nonetheless:


> *Alex Singleton on how Fairtrade isn't*
> Brian Micklethwait (London)  Globalization/economics • Media & Journalism
> 
> Alex Singleton's most recent posting here was on the subject of libertarians in the mainstream media, one in particular. Maybe that has some connection to the fact that Alex seems to be becoming a mainstream media person himself. A few days before that Samizdata piece about a fellow journalist, he did another Samizdata posting about Fairtrade beer, and he returned to the subject of Fairtrade, this time Fairtrade coffee (at the time of me writing this there is a problem with that link - hopefully it will soon work again), in a piece last Friday in one of the Telegraph blogs which he now regularly writes for. Yesterday's Sunday Telegraph (paper version and online) included a shorter version of that same piece. This was the bit (I'm quoting the longer Friday version) which I found most interesting, and most depressing:
> ...


 http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2008/02/alex_singleton.html

_EDIT: Ack!  That was just a summary ... original article here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/politics/brassneck/feb08/fairtrade.htm_


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## Edward Campbell (1 Mar 2008)

This column, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, describes, in Jeffrey Simpson’s usual backhanded way, the Conservative _vision_ I want in Ottawa – one focused on doing a whole lot less a whole lot better:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080301.COSIMP01/TPStory/National/columnists


> Harperites want to shrink Ottawa's power - and cash
> 
> JEFFREY SIMPSON
> jsimpson@globeandmail.com
> ...



The tax reduction methods that Simpson (and many others) find “economically dubious” are, for real fiscal conservatives, politically and economically sound: when _easy_ money, like the GST, is taken away from Ottawa it is very hard to get back. It is politically more expedient for governments, even traditionally spendthrift Liberal governments, to learn to do less with less than it is to raise taxes, especially to reintroduce an economically sound (because it doesn’t penalize savings and investment) consumption tax like the GST.

While I want massive spending increases for defence, foreign aid, _national_ (interprovincial) and _international_ (airports/seaports) infrastructure, border security, post-secondary education and R&D I want each of those increases to be ‘covered off’ by a withdrawal from areas of provincial jurisdiction – beginning with a repeal of the Canada Health Act.

Cutting taxes, squeezing government, is the best way to get started. When one squeezes a minority government it is hard to get _socially_ and _politically_ sound solutions because the first (and demonstrably most successful) instinct of politicians is to buy our votes with our own money. But majority governments can effect change – early in their mandates. Two successive ‘real’ fiscally conservative Conservative governments might just do the job well enough to set us back about 60 years – to the last time we had a sensible, responsible, prudent government in Canada: _Uncle Louis_ St Laurent’s government.


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## a_majoor (9 Mar 2008)

The real land of opportunity. This nation shares many of our values, has a free citizenry and sits astride the Indian ocean, one of the strategic areas of this century. Lets go!

http://ctv2.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080305.wibasia05/business/Business/businessBN/ctv-business



> *Unlocking India's promise*
> Google's there. IBM is, too. But most Canadian companies fear the risks outweigh the rewards. Ottawa entrepreneur Raj Narula makes a good living proving them wrong
> 
> By MARCUS GEE
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (23 Apr 2008)

More on the possibilities open to us as a nation. We have a strong hand if the Americans really want to modify or renegotiate NAFTA, and other ports beckon as well:

http://climbingoutofthedark.blogspot.com/2008/04/we-have-very-big-hammer.html



> *We Have A Very Big Hammer!*
> 
> I enjoy having an economist as our Prime Minister, he understands how trade and the economy are essential to our country. He shows it here, with his comments on NAFTA.
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (13 Jun 2008)

The OECD has issued a new report on Canada. See my comments on _Globe and Mail_ columnist Jeffrey Simpson's comments here.


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## a_majoor (13 Jun 2008)

> A synopsis of the OECD’s Report is here.
> 
> First: Jeffrey Simpson detests the Conservatives, so much so that he rarely uses the word, preferring Harperites or Harper’s government and so on. He, like his Globe and Mail colleague Lawrence Martin, wishes fondly for the old Progressive Conservatives of Bob Stanfield, Joe Clark and even Brian Mulroney – pale imitations of the Liberals: Canada’s natural governing party; both are low level anti-Americans, like most Canadians, but they are deeply committed haters of George W Bush and all his works and all his friends and, indeed, of those who dare to not hate Bush.
> 
> ...



I agree fully with Edward on this matter; Canada will trapped by "_good politics_" unless someone screws their heads on tight and takes action.

I suspect the only way this might happen is in the early days of the next government (probably a CPC minority again). Several windows of opportunity will exist:

1. Prime Minister Harper has indicated in the past he is only interested in staying for two terms. Assuming this is true, whatever action and consequences can be his legacy, for good or ill. If he is willing to take the heat, then potential candidates for leadership will be able to take positions and establish themselves as people with new ideas (although as a practical matter, they would be well advised to make the OECD's ideas their "new" ideas. Since the Liberals were able to serve up the 1993 "Red Book" as their "new" election platform for each election to 2005, this should not be too difficult!)

2. The Liberals will probably be decimated, and will also be embroiled in a bitter leadership convention. There will be a very fractured opposition to the Government's actions. Prime Minister Harper has demonstrated a remarkable ability to play off opposition parities against each other, so passing enabling legislation should be easier.

3. The "first 100 days" factor can be in play as well. If the government takes bold steps in that magic first 100 days, they can impliment programs and nurture them before the bloom is off. The negative fallout of following the recommendations that the Federal Government can impliment will probably be short lived, especially as the real effects of dramatic income tax cuts will show themselves shortly, and removal of economically distorting subsidies will have their initial impact early in the mandate, while the positive effects of removing subsidies will be apparent by the time of the next election.

The price of *not* taking action will be far higher, and since delayed action will probably be taken as panic stricken reactions to economic calamities, the negative effects will be far higher.


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## Edward Campbell (30 Jun 2008)

Here are two interesting articles, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _National Post_:

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=622818


> Complacency Hurts Nation: Think-Tank
> *Quality of life declining, report warns*
> 
> Matthew Coutts, National Post
> ...



And

http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=622851


> A blueprint for a more competitive country
> 
> Anne Golden, National Post
> 
> ...



Canadians, by and large, _hate_ discussing hearing about, much less thinking about *competitiveness*: it is a complex issue and most Canadians are afraid that they’re going to hear that they are *stupid*, _lazy_ and *overpaid* – all of which are, to some degree, true and _better_ education, _improved_ work methods and _more realistic_ salaries are parts of the solution.

But the real villains of the piece are:

•	An inept ‘management class’ that is very much overpaid – especially considering that it is timorous, lacks ambition and expects government handouts to cover bad corporate management;

•	Too many and too large “_chattering classes”_ that oppose globalization – even as most of them understand that globalization is, broadly, good for Canada and Canadians and good for the third world, too – and, therefore, oppose any and all measures designed to make Canada more competitive in the new global system. These _“chattering classes”_ are able to drive the political agenda through their privileged access to the mainstream media, and

•	Weak and venal politicians who, *despite knowing better*, refuse to act less they are branded anti-labour, pro-American plutocrats.

The devil will be in the details and the Conference Board’s views on those details will come out over the fall. Some of the ‘hot button’ issues are sure to be:

1. *Immigration* – we need more, a lot more, but it needs to be better focused and the immigrants we do allow in must be allowed to contribute. Essentially:

•	We take far too many immigrants from too many places (often doing real harm to an immigrant’s home country and acting counter to our own foreign aid programme) and they are, too often, people who have difficulty integrating into _mainstream_, productive Canada, but

•	We take far too few from a few places – where there are real surpluses of well educated, sophisticated people who can and do integrate easily and succeed here;

2. *Inter-provincial barriers* to labour and trade – that ought to be intolerable and unconstitutional in a sensible federal state; and

3. *Inadequate R&D*:

•	Governments need to *give* more money to universities for pure *R*esearch – even though the vast majority of Canadians, driven by our defining characteristics of greed and envy, don’t like ‘hand outs’ to anyone except themselves, and

•	Governments need to give more money (tax breaks) to corporations to encourage *D*evelopment – something Canadians _hate_ even more than they hate giving money to scientists.  

And the list will go on and on and on – there will be something to which 99% of Canadians will object and, on that basis, weak, ward heeling politicians will sit on their hands while the country slides, slowly but surely, into second rate status. 

_“Only in Canada, you say. Pity ...”_


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## Kilo_302 (30 Jun 2008)

One problem the report stresses is that we focus too much on "shoring up old industries," ie auto industry, and natural resource based industries. For example, profits from Alberta's oil industry should be invested in the R and D of renewable resource technology and other "green" methods of producing energy. It isn't that Canadians don't want to "give money" to corporations, its that right now we are giving too much money with not enough strings attached to the wrong corporations. Think of the government tax breaks and subsidies GM Canada has received in the last few years, and low and behold it's still cutting jobs. No amount of money will save our old industries from the effects of the global market, we just have to be smarter, and let some of them fade away, but with a plan in place to maintain our economic growth.


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## a_majoor (2 Jul 2008)

Just to keep this thread on track, examine the premise of the previous post: 



			
				Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> For example, profits from Alberta's oil industry should be invested in the R and D of renewable resource technology and other "green" methods of producing energy.



In other words, the profits that an industry earns through hard work, innovation, clever marketing and efficient management *can be taken from the company and shareholders and invested in whatever takes some politician's fancy.* Looking at Ontario, the Liberal government has done just that through aggressive and predatory taxation of both workers and industry to invest in "targeted" industries, with resulting job losses and net negative economic benefit. The opportunity costs of what _could_ have been invested in if the legitimate owners of the the wealth (i.e. the workers and industry) chose their own vehicles to invest in are harder to quantify, but we are living on the cusp of a recession now, and job growth outside the public sector is down to @ 2%.

Imagine if you will that the politicians in question were more interested in imperial conquest, or personal gain, or aquaculture. Simply replace "should be invested in the R and D of renewable resource technology and other "green" methods of producing energy." with any of the above choices (or pick your own) and you should begin to see the result.

As Edward pointed out, Canada is afflicted by a large and predatory "managerial class" which has developed highly refined skills at lobbying funds from the government for their benefit, much to the detriment of the smaller but much more important entrepreneurial class which is suffocated through high taxes, regulation and limited access to investment funds (as the private sector is heavily taxed). Cutting economic subsidies (and the taxes that pay for them) will go a long way to developing the diverse, broad based and efficient economy The Conference Board of Canada seeks. 

I noticed this article which just reinforces the idea that the "managerial class" is more interested in extracting tax dollars rather than working to earn profits:

http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/011492.html



> *The real reason for the Volt*
> 
> It's all about PR, according to the Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins:
> 
> ...



_Edit to include new article_


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## a_majoor (5 Jul 2008)

This is the environment we must change to reach our full potential as people and a nation:

http://freedomnation.blogspot.com/2008/07/pierre-lemieuxs-idea-of-america.html



> *Pierre Lemieux's "The Idea of America" *
> 
> Oddly enough this article written by the great Lemieux fits in well with my somewhat flippant last post. He wrote about the progress and disintegration of the American Revolution. It was published today by the Western Standard;
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (8 Jul 2008)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Ottawa Citizen_ is a useful contribution from Andrew Cohen:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=21e5e1bd-75e0-4f71-8b1c-adc3211347ae


> Canada's false comfort
> 
> Andrew Cohen
> 
> ...





Cohen is mostly right: while the US is the _natural_ base for any meaningful comparison, we are – by any fair and sensible measure – one of the world’s top ten to fifteen nations and we need to measure our accomplishments and our _deficits_ against the rest of the top tier of nations – the OECD plus a few.

I think we are doing better than the US in a few areas and we are probably doing better than *A*ustralia, *B*elgium, the *C*zech Republic and *D*enmark in an equally few fields, too. But we remain far behind many OECD nations in two important areas:

1.	Quality of life – however defined; and

2.	Productivity – which *decides* if we can even maintain, much less improve our already fairly weak quality of life. 

​


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## Edward Campbell (28 Jul 2008)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act, is an interesting commentary by Judith Maxwell:

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080728.wmaxwell0728/BNStory/Business/home


> Conquering Canada's competitive ambivalence
> 
> JUDITH MAXWELL
> 
> ...


_

The first problem is: politicians are cowards need to get re-elected; telling Canadian workers/voters that they are lazy and need to work longer and harder for less (which is what most workers/voters think they hear when someone says ‘productivity’) is not a good way to do that.

Ms. Maxwell says that ”role of the [proposed] council would be to speak truth to power on the basis of rigorous analysis.” That is, precisely, the role of the existing civil service. Here, the problem is that both most politicians and way too many civil servants are cowards. The civil servants are afraid to “speak truth to power” lest they offend ministers (paymasters) and the politicians are afraid to hear the “truth” lest it annoys the electorate (their paymasters). That’s why we have layer upon layer of ‘independent’ councils and agencies and boards, and, and, and, all, effectively, insulating politicians and civil servants from the unpalatable truth.

I suppose that yet another council cannot do much harm but the best course of action, for Stephen Harper and Kevin Lynch, would be to disband almost all of the existing ones and let senior civil servants – by and large a smart, intelligent (they’re different things), hard working and loyal group – “speak truth to power” and *require* politicians to hear it. 

_


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## a_majoor (28 Jul 2008)

There are plenty of independent think tanks, councils and other bodies operating outside the government, and all feel they are speaking "truth to power", even if their views are as divergent as the Frasier Institute or the Council of Canadians. So we have no shortage of opinions out there, and if you think there is a shortage, I can register another institute in a matter of weeks  .

The problem is two fold. Edward has nailed the first and most crucial problem: elected politicians are biased towards actions that get them reelected. Bold, out of the box thinking isn't one of those attributes, and this isn't likely to change (even term limits would only ensure "safe", middle of the road candidates would run).

The second problem is embedded in the thinking behind the proposal: government intervention in the economy will "make things right". More government intervention or more layers of bureaucracy simply gum up the works even more (we will have to wait for the competition council to report to a Parliamentary committee, then filter their recommendations through the various departments before producing legislation, which still has to go through public hearings and the three readings....). What we need is to tear out the bureaucracy and remove impediments to real competition like regional or targetted subsidies, and lower income tax rates by a meaningful amount to free up capital for investment.

Of course the people and companies who benefit from controlling taxes, regulations and subsidies or receiving them will fight to the death to preserve their positions of power and influence, so if you are serious about making Canada relevant again, then there is a hard battle ahead.


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## a_majoor (29 Jul 2008)

Lets start with something simple:

http://gerrynicholls.blogspot.com/2008/07/making-spending-transparent.html



> *Making Spending Transparent*
> In a bid to make government spending more transparent, some U.S. states are actually posting every cheque they write online.
> 
> This empowers citizens to keep an eye on where their money is going.
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (30 Jul 2008)

Evidently, according to this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Ottawa Citizen_, we have, in Ottawa, the first *responsible* government since around 1967:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=f343a8aa-2724-42e1-a969-8e637d0288b1


> Tory budget ignored public concerns: survey
> *Pre-budget poll reveals global warming trumped military spending*
> 
> Don Butler, The Ottawa Citizen
> ...



Can you imagine!?! Politicians doing what they think is right rather than just buying our votes with our own money?  Impossible! I can pretty much guarantee that *none* of Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, Stéphane Dion, Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae could/can imagine such nonsense. The polls must be followed, slavishly, they all agree because that’s how one grasps power – for its own sake, just ‘cuz Liberals are entitled to it.

What ought to be instructive, to us, here in rmy.ca is “[Canadians] gave lowest priority to increasing spending on defence, asserting Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic, enforcing tougher laws on property crime and lowering taxes.” Despite all the “support the troops” slogans and red T shirts on Fridays the simple fact is that, no matter that brave young men and women are dying in Afghanistan, *Canadians do not care about their national defence, nor do they give a damn about the people who fight and die to defend them!* Rick Hiller changed some minds, but not enough.

Anyway: Kudos to Stephen Harper and his Conservative Government for having the sense of responsibility and the political courage to do the right thing, even when Canadian voters want the wrong things done.


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## stegner (30 Jul 2008)

> Can you imagine!?! Politicians doing what they think is right rather than just buying our votes with our own money?  Impossible! I can pretty much guarantee that none of Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, Stéphane Dion, Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae could/can imagine such nonsense. The polls must be followed, slavishly, they all agree because that’s how one grasps power – for its own sake, just ‘cuz Liberals are entitled to it.



Responsible government is representative government.   The confidence of the House is only maintained, because the House has the confidence that the government has the confidence of the people.

Explain the GST reduction please.  If that is not bribing Canadians with their own money, I don’t know what is.  It was an extremely short sighted political move that has resulted in a deficit.  Never trust an economist in office is my motto. Please explain the billions that went to bribe Quebec, especially the payment right before a provincial election, in which Charest was returned.  

Please have a look at this story-as it contests the heart of your argument.  Harper is a tactician and uses polls, despite his most fervent denials.  Indeed, he uses polls* more than the Liberals.*  http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=142342

Sure Harper is spending money on defence.  However, Martin was doing the same, and would be continuing to do so if had been returned to office. 

In sum, Harper is a typical politician, and while the increase of defence expenditures is good, I don't see how current expenditures are vouchsafing Canada's claim to the north or ensuring the security of our domestic territory.  

Edited for format and spelling


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## Fishbone Jones (30 Jul 2008)

stegner said:
			
		

> Explain the GST reduction please.  If that is not bribing Canadians with their own money, I don’t know what is.



I don't look at it as a bribe. I look at it as responsible government returning money that the liberals stole from me.


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## stegner (30 Jul 2008)

> I don't look at it as a bribe. I look at it as responsible government returning money that the liberals stole from me.



The GST was implemented by the Conservatives not the Liberals.  Read your history book.


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## Edward Campbell (30 Jul 2008)

stegner said:
			
		

> ...
> Explain the GST reduction please.  If that is not bribing Canadians with their own money, I don’t know what is.  It was an extremely short sighted political move that has resulted in a deficit.  Never trust an economist in office is my motto.
> ...



The GST reduction is excellent *policy* and great *politics*, too.

Canadians hate the GST. They shouldn’t because it is fairly well designed tax and consumption taxes are always and in every single respect superior to income taxes: they are, to some degree, voluntary or, at least, discretionary (consume less, pay less in taxes) and they are not (as income taxes are) a drag on investment and job creation. But, Canadians hate the GST and that’s enough for the Liberals.

The great thing about reducing the GST is that because Canadians hate it so much the Liberals will be very, very reluctant to put it back up when, inevitably, they get back into power. That means that all future governments have less and less money with which to ‘play’ – that, too, is almost always (big wars excepted) a good thing. Most government spending, especially most spending in the ‘health and social services’ _envelope_ is subject to the law of unintended consequences and ends up doing considerable harm along with some good.

Now, I would rather that the Conservatives had raised the GST and cut federal income taxes to zero for those earning, say, $25,000.00 per year (currently one pays $1,200+ in federal tax and a further 1% to 5% of income in provincial taxes on $20,000 and $2,600+ and 3% to 7% on $30,000) and raise the marginal tax rate for that very, very tiny minority of Canadians who earn incomes from employment of, say, $500,000.00. But, I understand that meaningful income tax cuts – ones that actually do economic and political good – must be so deep that the concomitant GST increase is too much to bear, politically.

<rant>
I, personally, would like to se the combined federal and provincial GST set at 20%+ - with very low to zero income taxes for really low income ($25,000±/year) employed Canadians and federal corporate income tax reduced from around 38% to, say, 10%. I want taxes on investment income to be cancelled, entirely, because investors, not governments, create jobs and taxing investment income is a *stupid* policy – but much loved by Liberals and socialists. (Socialists cannot help liking stupid policies because they start from a stupid socio-economic-political philosophical base.)
</rant>


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## stegner (30 Jul 2008)

> Now, I would rather that the Conservatives had raised the GST and cut federal income taxes to zero for those earning, say, $25,000.00 per year (currently one pays $1,200+ in federal tax and a further 1% to 5% of income in provincial taxes on $20,000 and $2,600+ and 3% to 7% on $30,000) and raise the marginal tax rate for that very, very tiny minority of Canadians who earn incomes from employment of, say, $500,000.00. But, I understand that meaningful income tax cuts – ones that actually do economic and political good – must be so deep that the concomitant GST increase is too much to bear, politically.
> 
> <rant>
> I, personally, would like to see the combined federal and provincial GST set at 20%+ - with very low to zero income taxes for really low income ($25,000±/year) employed Canadians and federal corporate income tax reduced from around 38% to, say, 10%. I want taxes on investment income to be cancelled, entirely, because investors, not governments, create jobs and taxing investment income is a stupid policy – but much loved by Liberals and socialists. (Socialists cannot help liking stupid policies because they start from a stupid socio-economic-political philosophical base.)



I agree with everything here, except the corporate tax cuts.  Corporations don't like to create jobs unless they really have to, I am arguing from a rationale choice perspective in this respect.  Corporations are utility maximizing individuals.   I am against corporate welfare, I say this as an Albertan perplexed why mostly foreign oil companies deserves billions upon billions in subsidies during times of record profits and oil prices, while I have to pay crazy gas prices for a resource that I along with fellow Albertans actually own .   The profits are not staying in Alberta as the province is getting a pittance.  If you cut corporate taxes, I believe there has to be commitment to re-invest corporate profits into the Canadian state, rather than to transfer profits to headquarters, which happens to be in the U.S in our branch-plant economy.


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## Teeps74 (30 Jul 2008)

I read my history book, and remember the CBC interview well. The Liberals coasted to a majority victory on the promise of getting rid of the hated GST.


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## stegner (30 Jul 2008)

> I read my history book, and remember the CBC interview well. The Liberals coasted to a majority victory on the promise of getting rid of the hated GST.



I don't think that was not the main reason, otherwise they would have been tossed from office in 1997.   I think it had to do more for Canadians opinions of the Conservatives and Brian Mulroney at that particular time in history.


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## Snafu-Bar (30 Jul 2008)

Well income tax is what it is, the rest of the taxes are just greed, tax on the tax in many cases. Buy gas/smokes/beer all taxed and then taxed again upon purchase. It's any wonder people are looking to earn 20+ bucks an hour these days. Throw in neccessities like hydro/phone/propery and eat even more tax on taxes.

 I think it would be in the best interest of Canadians to throw out the current system and start over from scratch. The world economy has changed a ton in the past couple of decades and our economy is lagging behind the times. Dropping the GST is going to have an impact on the countries overall revenue, but don't forget the GST(government stealing tactics) was a "defeicit reduction" tax meant to balance the books before being dropped. Well now that the government has implemented the cash grab and voted themselves many a hefty self appointed pay raise it's no wonder why it isn't going away any time soon.

 :

 A resposible goverment is one that still doesn't exist....


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## Edward Campbell (30 Jul 2008)

stegner said:
			
		

> ...   The profits are not staying in Alberta as the province is getting a pittance.  If you cut corporate taxes, I believe there has to be commitment to re-invest corporate profits into the Canadian state, rather than to transfer profits to headquarters, which happens to be in the U.S in our branch-plant economy.



Profits - *all* profits from all eneavours belong, 100%, to the owners - the investors. No one else, not governments, not the resource 'owners' have a *right* to a penny.

We all (well, almost all) agree that we shall have governments and that governments shall be allowed to tax us in order to e.g. defend the realm. So far, so good. But I, as an investor, am no more obliged (nor should I be required) to pay any extra for any thing than should any consumer. The fact that I take risks and earn income while the consumer just whines is not, in any way, sufficient justification for me to be *obliged/u]* share my wealth with him (or her).

Stegner has, explicitly, given us the Liberal Party of Canada's _rationale_. I find it deeply, deeply flawed - at every level. It is economically unsound and philosophical rubbish.


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## GAP (30 Jul 2008)

I find the Liberal party's philosophy/mandate/practise becoming more and more 1984-ish. Trudeau & Chretien operated on the principle of Big Government having womb to tomb control, and their policies reflect that.

As for Companies/Shareholders being compelled to create jobs....rubbish. If the market and resources are there the jobs will be created by talented businessmen, but only as many as needed to satisfy the market, not some societal dreamer


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## Proud_Newfoundlander (30 Jul 2008)

stegner said:
			
		

> I don't think that was not the main reason, otherwise they would have been tossed from office in 1997.   I think it had to do more for Canadians opinions of the Conservatives and Brian Mulroney at that particular time in history.



Well, canadians hated it, but by '97 they weren't pissed with it as much as they were in '93. In addition there was other stuff getting them rotted, like decreased spending on social services and reduced transfter payments to the provinces.

As for the GST that has softened the blow on Canada from the US mortgage crisis


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## a_majoor (30 Jul 2008)

Having the strength to follow your convictions is part of being responsible. 

The Conservative Party offered a platform based on five priorities (Mr Dithers had something like 178, and Mr Dion tells us it is difficult to set priorities...), and the people gave them a mandate. As the government, they have followed their platform fairly closely, resisting the tendency to trim their sails according to the polls. As always, there have been some deviations from the plan, but certainly nothing as blatent as denying they ever actually promised to abolish the GST (and Mr Chreitien continued to deny it even after a recording of him making that promise was played to him before a live audience!).

At any rate, it seems quite clear from the tone of the article the headline is ment to be seen in an "ironic" light, and this is another slam at the government ("my God, they won't follow the polls because polls tell us what is really important!)


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## stegner (30 Jul 2008)

> Stegner has, explicitly, given us the Liberal Party of Canada's rationale. I find it deeply, deeply flawed - at every level. It is economically unsound and philosophical rubbish.



How so?  It's all right for taxpayers to spend billions subsidizing companies, but they are not entitled to any of the profits?  Answer me this.  



> Profits - all profits from all eneavours belong, 100%, to the owners - the investors. No one else, not governments, not the resource 'owners' have a right to a penny.



But the governments and the people are investors when the subsidize industry no?


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## Donaill (30 Jul 2008)

There are times when I tire of hearing about politics. People continually point fingers at one another, saying that one party is worse than another or one PM  was worse than another. Too many times, I have seen paries get elected based on what they said they would do and then see them do the opposite. Whether it was tossing Joe Clarke out because he wanted to raise a certain tax, only to see the liberals raise it. Then there were idiots like John Buchanon, Gerald Regan, Peter MacKay and Brian Mulrooney (yes I know thay were not all PMs). My point is that we constantly point fingers at others saying that it was some one elses fault, without fully realising that the point that we are at now was the result of several different politicians.  Mulrooney was, in my opinion, a liar that got away with theft and selling out our nation via free trade. Now our goverment has decided to gaurentee the US a set amout of resources, regardless of our own need.  

  I have started to see a clear divide between the West and the East. The West has gone in a very ultra-right direction, while the East has stayed in a some what traditional Canadian stance. Am I wrong in this observation?  Social minded programs and spending does not mean that it will drive the economy into the ground, no more than it does when we give tax breaks to large companies. Balance is the key.  We see, in the US, where an untethered free market can go in the wrong direction. We also see it in other countries where companies carrying US or Canadian flags abuse or take advantage of lax labour or enviromental laws. 

  I agree with some of what others have said in this section. Why should a company that is taking taxes from us, in the form of subsidies, be allowed to not invest in our economy. Why should GM be allowed to close down a plan in Ontario, that has a higher productivity level than any place in the US yet still not face any economic back lash from our goverment or its populace? Corporate welfare is not the same thing as social welfare if a company is allowed to just close up shop and move else where without any investment in our country.   To any East Coasters on here I just have to say one word, ACOA, that should raise eye brows and doubts. 

  Why should a Canadian owned shipping line be allowed to get coal from a suppresive regime, such as China, where the miners die by the hundreds while we have viable coal mines here in Canada? 

  On a final note, though I am not from The Rock, Danny for Prime Minister.


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## stegner (30 Jul 2008)

> On a final note, though I am not from The Rock, Danny for Prime Minister.



I am not from the Rock and I fully concur.  Danny Boy has more balls and brains than the entire House of Commons put together.


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## Donaill (30 Jul 2008)

Canada, and Canadians first. I don't care who came from where or who did what to whom. It is time we started to pull our heads out of the dirt, make a serious try at total inclusion for all members of this country and make ourselves more self reliant and not so reliant on our neibours economy. Lets manufacture more of our own goods, stop shipping so much out only to buy it back.


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## Edward Campbell (30 Jul 2008)

Donaill said:
			
		

> ... Lets manufacture more of our own goods, stop shipping so much out only to buy it back.



That'll be easy if we can manage two simple things:

1. Convince Canadian workers to do more work for less; and

2. Convince all Canadians, including all those now doing more for less, to pay a lot more for all he things they now buy in _The Bay_, _WalMart_ and _Zellers_.


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## Edward Campbell (30 Jul 2008)

stegner said:
			
		

> ...
> But the governments and the people are investors when the subsidize industry no?



Yes, they may be. But, it depends: If the subsidy is a loan then the government, like any bond-holder (as just confirmed by the SCC), has no right to anything but repayment, on whatever terms and with whatever interest was negotiated. Most subsidies are most akin to bonds. But, most governments are poor at business and they give loans with scandalous repayment terms - outright grants, in effect, but without any ownership rights for the taxpayer.

If the government (the people) wants a share of the company, to be an investor, entitled to a share of the profits and a full share of the losses, too, it can buy one - that's why the gods made stock markets. Subsidies can involve ownership, but very, very, very few ever do. If the government invests enough money (buys a big enough share) it can take control of the board and run the company. Look at the great job it did with a long, sad train of government owned enterprises from the '30s onwards. If our government (Conservative or Liberal) starts buying, big, into companies in which I invest then I will bail out with all haste.


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## Donaill (30 Jul 2008)

NS Power was run better by the province than it has been under private ownership.


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## Donaill (30 Jul 2008)

How much iron ore gets sent to the US only to be bought back? Canadians want to earn enough to live on. That is why some many east coasters have moved to Ontario and westward. East Coast companies seem to think that the beautiful scenery is enough to convince people to work here.  Never mind that an apprentice electrician cannot get enough hours in to get a full ticket in a reasonable time. Why stay here for low wages, part time jobs when you can go else where to get a good wage and full time work.

 Clothing and footware aside there are many manufactured goods in Canada that the workers recieve a good wage and the product is still affordable. Coal was an example, CCD camaras used by industry and elsewhere, the Blackberry, and many Hondas and Toyotas.


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## Edward Campbell (30 Jul 2008)

Donaill said:
			
		

> NS Power was run better by the province than it has been under private ownership.



Running monopolies, with guaranteed low cost capital (plucked from from the taxpayers' pockets) is what governments do - about as well anyone else would and could.

Most governments, in efforts to balance their books, have 'hived off' their monopolistic enterprises.

NS Power still has 97% of the generating capacity in NS but now it has to get its capital in the real, competitive world - at a much higher cost.


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## TangoTwoBravo (30 Jul 2008)

Donaill said:
			
		

> Why should GM be allowed to close down a plan in Ontario, that has a higher productivity level than any place in the US yet still not face any economic back lash from our goverment or its populace? Corporate welfare is not the same thing as social welfare if a company is allowed to just close up shop and move else where without any investment in our country.   To any East Coasters on here I just have to say one word, ACOA, that should raise eye brows and doubts.
> 
> Why should a Canadian owned shipping line be allowed to get coal from a suppresive regime, such as China, where the miners die by the hundreds while we have viable coal mines here in Canada?



I would argue that economics involves choices.  Companies will choose to locate where they can make the most money or just to stay in business.  People choose to pay for cheaper goods to make ends meet or stretch their money a little further.  It seems that manufacturing workers choose to price themselves out of a job.  The government can try to make these choices for everybody, but I do not believe that government knows best when it comes to this sort of thing.  Government can, perhaps, smooth out the bumps and help people and regions make adjustments in the short-term.  

What makes the coal mines you mention viable? What was the price of that coal compared to the coal from China?  At the risk of sounding like an uncaring monster, concern for workers' rights in China and $1.48 might get you a coffee here when it comes down to it.

People abroad are willing to buy our oil and natural gas at the price we are willing to sell it at.  That makes that industry viable in my eyes.


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## Donaill (30 Jul 2008)

The cost in lives should be reason enough. However the economic reasons are just as sound. The transport costs to bring that coal into Canada do not make it worth geting. AS far as workers prcing themselves out of a job, well I differ on that opinion. Michelin tire has three plants in Canada, that far out perform the US conterparts, which pay a very good wage and have good benefits. They still manage to make a profit. The good years seem to have dimmed peoples memmories of the early days of the labour movement in this country. Days when companies sold goods to the workers at an inflated price. Often workers would have to put these goods on time and continue to work for poor wages, barely being able to survive.  There were many deaths caused by strike busters. Companies will never pay a fair wage unless they are forced to. The only way wages will drop is when the economy takes a very serious blow, causing great losses within all aspects of the economy. 

  There is no easy answer to any of these questions. As ecomies run, inflation occurs. Whether it is because the buying power of third world nations improves, such as the case with China, or other economic reasons. Peoples wages need to keep up with inflation, if not lead it by a certain percentage. Those guys that started working at Michelin in the 80's, making 18/hr, now have less purchasing power now. Yet there are those that would say that 18 is still a great wage. Perhaps it is in some areas. However lets say that said person prchaserd a 150,000 house, only to be sorrounded by 500,000 summer homes. His propery taxes are severely affected by those houses. 

 I know this is all stuff you already know. My point is that our "high wages" are not as high now as they were in the 70's.


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## TangoTwoBravo (30 Jul 2008)

Donaill said:
			
		

> Companies will never pay a fair wage unless they are forced to.



What constitutes a fair wage?  I would think that the market would determine the appropriate wage for a given worker.  A company would be forced to pay workers more if another company was willing to poach those workers with a given skill by offering a higher wage.

I understand and appreciate the need for workplace safety regulations and associated laws.  I am not calling for a completely unregulated economy.  That being said, I still do not think that "work" has value beyond that which somebody is willing to pay for that work.  If the only way to get a raise is to go on strike and intimidate those willing to do the same work for the original wages I say tough luck to the strikers.


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## Donaill (30 Jul 2008)

That was the only way to get a fare wage. Wages were not fare. Retail still complains if they have to pay a wage that brings someone above the poverty line. Farmers have a difficult time as well, often having to bring in people from the Caribean (At least in the area I grew up in).


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## Command-Sense-Act 105 (30 Jul 2008)

Re companies not paying fair wages:

This is an old piece of union rhetoric that gets rehashed any time a company has to make the hard choices.  I'll offer some thoughts:

1.  Most companies need human capital - skills, experience, wisdom, knowledge - in order to thrive, prosper and consider growing.  If Widget Co pays its experienced hands $5 an hour, Ace Widget, a startup in geographical proximity can pay $5.50 or $5 plus benefits to attract Widget Co's workers, undercut its human capital advantage and gain the ability to produce either a superior product, a cheaper product, or enough products to satisfy a given market by taking advantage of economies of scale.  Therefore, wages will seesaw and ratchet back and forth to an acceptable level between competitors until the equilibrium between the local economic situation, company ability to pay wages balanced with profits required and the necessity to keep a stable workforce.

2.  Wages should reflect the necessary skills and background of the worker, level of complexity, danger, hazard and sensitivity of the work required.  Unfortunately the UAW/CAW have skewed this relationship in North America and are quite near to killing the goose laying the golden eggs (the North American auto industry) through crushing wages, benefits, pensions and various other costs which sap company profit.  Unfortunately, all these "goodies" are now seen as an entitlement by many workers, who also hold the view that a high school educated worker whose job skills consist of using an impact driver to install left side seatbelt retractors in Dodge minivans deserves to be paid an hourly wage that permist him to live in a $250k house, have 2 new cars (never more than 2 years old) in the drive, an inground pool, plus have at least two of the following:  ski doo/jetski/bass boat/ATV/motorcycle/cabin cruiser/cottage up North, etc, plus the right to retire and continue living in a commensurate style and level... but where are the skills?  What is so "fair" about these extraordinarily inflated wages?  Before the flames start, I'm from Windsor, I've seen all this.  Also seen college-educated skilled tradesmen down tools and go work on the line in the Big Three plants because they could make more money doing that than their trade.  Hence, we are faced with some of the most poorly-built cars and trucks, protected by import tariffs, quotas and other governmental protection mechanisms, priced above $50k. 

3.  The early days of the labour movement are over.  There was a time when unions fulfilled their function - united a generally less-educated, less-literate workforce to provide them protection against unscrupulous employers who used and abused them, owned the media outlets to prevent their stories being told, lobbied to prevent health and safety, wage protection and other regualtions from being passed into law and generally treated the worker like chattel.  Those days are long over.  Our education system now is far better.  Illiteracy is quite low.  For those still illiterate, television news and radio news, unfettered by the thumb of Rockefeller et al, chase down and break stories of worker mistreatment, environmental destruction and inhuman working conditions with regularity.  As far as a voice is concerned, any worker with a terminal can start a blog, submit stories to news services, post photos, video, audio, documentary evidence.  Laws have been passed and are enforced with amazing regularity concerning health, safety, wages, etc.  The worker today does not need Bob White speaking "on his behalf".  This "the labour movement is the only protection workers have" idea is a complete fallacy and has been for about 20 years.  Unions today are like the self-licking ice cream cone whose main effort seems to be keeping themselves alive and relevant.  Unfortunately, like any other parasite, they will eventually kill their hosts.

4.  Profits are like breathing.  You don't get up each day and consider breathing to be the sum total of your life's effort.  Businesses don't consider profit their sole motivator, because this is a barely-sustainable reason and the reason so many companies go under when tougher times hit.  However, if you do not breathe, you will die.  Unless companies profit, they go under.

The impassioned appeal for higher wages is good - but at what cost?  Of all the workers' jobs?  A better solution would be perhaps a push for a return to a slightly devalued Canadian currency.  A dollar at parity is good if as a consumer you want to go to the USA and buy cheap satellite dishes, NASCAR memorabilia and clothing.  Unfortunately, it's bad if you are involved in manufacturing or knowledge industries.  A return to the 80 cent Canadian dollar would do far more towards keeping jobs in Canada and keeping wages at a "fair" level than any amount of tax breaks, strikes, walkouts or hand-wringing.

My thoughts.


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## Fishbone Jones (31 Jul 2008)

Donaill said:
			
		

> That was the only way to get a fare wage. Wages were not fare. Retail still complains if they have to pay a wage that brings someone above the poverty line. Farmers have a difficult time as well, often having to bring in people from the Caribean (At least in the area I grew up in).


Well, we bring them in from Mexico here. Only because we can't get the people on the welfare lines to do the picking, but it's not for a lack of asking though :

Ahh, I love the socialist dogma bullshit where everyone is entitled to everything everyone else has, whether you work for it or not.

When I see Jack and Cynthia work in Parliment for minimum wage, or the Union bosses collecting strike pay with the workers, then I might start buying into their pink glasses Utopian crapfest.

I work for what I have, and I shouldn't have to give up one cent for some shiftless bastard that sits on his ass all day at the street corner with a Timmies cup, and not reporting HIS income when he gets the welfare check bought with my dollars.

Wages aren't fair. Well guess what? Life ain't fair. Tough shit.


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## Disenchantedsailor (31 Jul 2008)

[quote\]
  On a final note, though I am not from The Rock, Danny for Prime Minister. 
[/quote]


I'm not sure I agree here,  big balls yes, but lets keep in mind this is the same man who had every Canadian Flag in his jurisdiction hauled down.  Is that the same kind of reaction we could expect from him in the National office


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## aesop081 (31 Jul 2008)

Donaill said:
			
		

> Farmers have a difficult time as well,



Yes the poor farmers i saw when i lived in Alberta and same with the poor farmers i see around BC. The same farmers with huge houses, big SUVs, 4 door garages, etc, etc,etc......

Yeah those poor farmers are everywhere and its so sad.

Its not like crops are fetching record rices these days or anything......


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## Donaill (31 Jul 2008)

You must be seeing different farmers than I am because when a beef farmers around here aren't wealthy by any means. Cash crop farms are slowly disappearing, and have been so since large   corporate farms have started taking over. That cycle may change now since it is starting to become less viable to farm such large quantities of land because the equipment requires more fuel.
  What is killing the NA auto industry was thier failure to take the Asian auto industry seriously. With the opening of the NS market to Asian cars came some complacency. In the beginning the vehicles, such as Toyota trucks and cars, were not at the same quality level. Over time, companies such as Honda engineered better quality and more fuel efficient vehicles. The "Big Three" are new to this way of thinking.  While Ford and the other two have seen a decrease in demand for SUV and truck sales, the ASian owned companies have expanded thier plants here and seen an increase in sales. I will admit that some of it has to do with fuel costs. If gas was still around the 0.85 to 0.95 cent/l level than perhaps truck sales would still be booming along. While some blame the unions, lets not forget that down the road from the Chrysler plant, in Oshawa, is the non unionized Honda plant, paying the same wage and the same benefits. I think Chrysler would be still happy enough to pay the wages and benefits, if the company was able to earn money with anything larger than car. Even high end vehicle sales have declined.


 Re: Danny and the flag. That is not teh first time that a Canadian Premier has gone to drastic measures to get his point across. Joseph Howe was famous for it.


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## Edward Campbell (31 Jul 2008)

Donaill said:
			
		

> ... My point is that our "high wages" are not as high now as they were in the 70's.



Actually, by any reasonable measure, they are higher. (See, e.g. http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/11-516-XIE/sectione/sectione.htm#Employ%20Earn )

The problem, for Canadians, is that pretty much all of our competitors - including the USA - are still more _productive_, still doing more for less.

This is not just a labour problem. Canadian management is highly risk averse. R&D spending (much 'R' should be funded by governments while most 'D' should be paid for by the private sector) is poorly managed in Canada: sporadically provided and often misdirected for political purposes. A weak Canadian dollar, which was applauded by labour for making Canadian goods more 'competitive' in world (US) markets, made it more and more difficult for Canadian companies to upgrade their infrastructure - the end result has been that Canadian plants are no longer able to compete so jobs are lost. (That old "law of unintended consequences" strikes again.)

Slightly off topic, but ...

Re: transportation costs (e.g. coal or consumer goods from China) modern shipping and port handling facilities have reduced the shipping component part of the overall costs of most products, even bulk coal, to nearly insignificant levels. That's why the Chinese want to buy all the oil we can produce and ship it from e.g. Prince Rupert.


----------



## a_majoor (31 Jul 2008)

Much of this discussion should be hived off to the Economic Superthread (where most of this has been rehashed already. Economics *WILL* be taught in primary school when I am Imperator!).

Back to the opening of the topic, the government seems to be softly differentiating itself from the progressive/socialist/"Liberal" tropes that have been dominating politics since the late 1960's. In the UK, "New Labour" seems to be self destructing (and British society is taking a huge beating), and Canada's Liberal Party is also melting down (I will repeat my prediction that they will become a "rump" party over the next two elections as voters with socialist inclinations realise the real thing exists with the NDP and Greens), and the American Democratic party is becoming a parody of itself (although they still have the levers of power). I would say the "Progressive" philosophy behind these parties and similar political movements has become exhausted, but since "Progressives" still hold the commanding heights of the MSM, Judiciary, academia and the permanent bureaucracy it is difficult to openly challenge "Progressiveism" in any of it's forms. After all, they still have the power of the State to grind their enemies into dust (look at the actions of the various "human rights" commission's in Canada, for example).

As Edward has pointed out, much of what the current government is doing is setting the stage so future governments will have a difficult time recreating the "tax and spend" mentality of the past, and gradually withdrawing the Federal Government from areas of Provincial jurisdiction. On the other hand, there is still much work to be done, and it is certainly not the mark of "responsible" government to increase spending at the rate this government is (even in wartime, and especially if the increase is not directly tied to war expenditures). Overall, I will still side with the idea that this is a responsible government _overall_ given they are backing their election promises with legislative action.


----------



## Edward Campbell (31 Jul 2008)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Much *All* of this discussion should be hived off to the Economic Superthread (where most of this has been rehashed already...



Mods: please merge this with the Economic Superthread. My original intention was to provoke a *political* discussion but it appears we need to rehash elementary economics again and again and again. 

DONE- BRUCE


----------



## observor 69 (31 Jul 2008)

This New York Times article on Obama speaks to a theme I have been ruminating on lately. The use of pragmatic  thought on policy issues.  Analysis of political issues based on reason rather than fixed idealogical stands. The belief that both sides may have parts of the answer to problems.

July 30, 2008
The Long Run
Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart 
By JODI KANTOR
CHICAGO — The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count. At a school where economic analysis was all the rage, he taught rights, race and gender. Other faculty members dreamed of tenured positions; he turned them down. While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship.

               -----------------------------
Mr. Obama, now the junior senator from Illinois and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spent 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Most aspiring politicians do not dwell in the halls of academia, and few promising young legal thinkers toil in state legislatures. Mr. Obama planted a foot in each, splitting his weeks between an elite law school and the far less rarefied atmosphere of the Illinois Senate.


But as a professor, students say, Mr. Obama was in the business of complication, showing that even the best-reasoned rules have unintended consequences, that competing legal interests cannot always be resolved, that a rule that promotes justice in one case can be unfair in the next.


More at link.


http://tinyurl.com/64cjop


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## a_majoor (31 Jul 2008)

Baden  Guy said:
			
		

> This New York Times article on Obama speaks to a theme I have been ruminating on lately. The use of pragmatic  thought on policy issues.  Analysis of political issues based on reason rather than fixed idealogical stands. The belief that both sides may have parts of the answer to problems.



Ideology (when used correctly) is a means of organizing and using a set of principles to examine problems and propose and implement solutions. A person with a "Progressive" ideology uses principles such as bestowed "positive" rights, group rights, State intervention and a preception that the "masses" are ignorant and need guidance to define solutions; a person with a "Classical Liberal" ideology will look for ways to preserve or extend natural "negative" rights,  Free Speech, Property rights and the Rule of Law to define their solutions.

The acid test is comparing the proposed results with the empirical evidence: did the proposed solution work as advertised? For the most part, solutions informed by "progressive" ideas have not worked, and the ever increasing spiral of State intervention to attempt to "fix" regulatory failure simply shows how threadbare "Progressiveism" has become. Classical liberalism really worked (unfortunately, we now have few here and now examples to point to, although most people will still be familiar with the growth of the Asian "Tiger" economies, the Irish miracle and the Reagan Revolution), and if the current Government of Canada continues to adhere to these principles and Provinces move back towards them (look at the sea change in Saskatchewan right now as they throw off decades of NDP rule), then we should expect to see our lot improve.


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## Brad Sallows (17 Aug 2008)

>A person with a "Progressive" ideology uses principles such as bestowed "positive" rights, group rights, State intervention and a preception that the "masses" are ignorant and need guidance to define solutions;

What you've described is Classical Fascism.


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## stegner (17 Aug 2008)

> What you've described is Classical Fascism.



No it is Classical Conservatism.   There is no classical fascism by the way-just fascism.


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## Brad Sallows (17 Aug 2008)

"Classical fascism" means the old-fashioned type of Mussolini and Franco, rather than the bizarre apocalyptic hate-mongering genocidal offshoot run by Hitler.  "Classical conservatism" predates fascism of any stripe, and is rooted in the question of measuring change before implementing it.

It isn't hard to recognize fascism when you see it; several countries in Europe continue to flirt with it.  When you cross over the line from merely redistributing income to help people in need, to include dictating trivial things they may and may not do, you've crossed the line from socialism to fascism.


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## stegner (17 Aug 2008)

> When you cross over the line from merely redistributing income to help people in need, to include dictating trivial things they may and may not do, you've crossed the line from socialism to fascism.



Ok gotcha.


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## a_majoor (17 Aug 2008)

A problam and a solution. Too bad our political establishment is too scared to do this; it would only be like peeling off a bandage really fast: a brief moment of pain, then relief.

http://libertyincanada.com/blog/index.php?blog=2&title=&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#comments



> *Abolish cultural subsidies*
> 08/15/08 | by Editor  | Categories: Weekly Column
> By Pierre Lemieux
> 
> ...


----------



## stegner (18 Aug 2008)

Despite these cuts, Harper will undoubtedly fail to challenge the biggest cultural subsidy of them all:  Official Bilingualism.   While this policy perhaps makes some sense in Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario it really does not make sense in the rest of Canada.  I wonder about how many billions have been spent on this project since 1968.


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## Brad Sallows (18 Aug 2008)

Undoubtedly.  What a shame he's not that politically stupid, eh?


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## Kirkhill (18 Aug 2008)

Excellent attempt stegner.

But when trolling I understand it works better if you use an unrecognized identity.  It works even better if you hack into some unsuspecting 3rd party's system and use their ISP address as well.

Bilingualism IS.

TTFE.


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## a_majoor (18 Aug 2008)

Micheal Coren on Arts and Sports funding:

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Coren_Michael/2008/08/16/6469741-sun.php



> *Artists, athletes love free cash*
> 
> By MICHAEL COREN
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (3 Nov 2008)

The ghost of Bob Rae stalks the Ontario Legislature! I for one hope the Federal government refuses to buckle under to this fiscal blackmail; McGuinty created this problem, now he must solve it or take the consequences:

http://voterick.com/wordpress/?p=125



> *McGuinty and the Deficit Monster vs Harper*
> 
> What if Dalton McGuinty has no intention of controlling Ontario’s slide into fiscal deficit? What if he has every intention of allowing it to happen, and is willing to aid and abet Ontario’s descent? What if he has all his excuses ready, and intends to use this as a lever to; (1) force more money out of the federal government, and (2) blame them for all his problems, while (3) endearing himself to his core supporters?
> 
> ...



We should also note that the cause of the global financial crisis is the massive inbalance in the ratio between debt and underlying wealth in both the public and private realms. Allowing a deficit and increasing debt simply ensures any recession will be longer, deeper and more difficult to recover from.


----------



## a_majoor (23 Nov 2008)

Some people simply don't learn from experience:

http://unambig.blogspot.com/2008/11/bob-rae-blackest-pot-in-kitchen.html



> *Bob Rae: The Blackest Pot In The Kitchen*
> 
> 
> I don't know what's stranger: the most fiscally irresponsible Premier in Ontario's history defending the fiscally irresponsible car companies; or that Bob Rae considers it an asset in his portfolio. Mr.Rae is "pressing" Ottawa to lobby Washington to bail out the auto makers that are close to going belly up, whilst slamming Prime Minister Harper.
> ...


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## a_majoor (29 Nov 2008)

Will we be able to weather the global recession and the next four years of American government?

http://thesecretsofvancouver.com/wordpress/money-for-nothing/taxes



> *Money For Nothing*
> November 29th, 2008 Posted in Taxes
> 
> Stephen Harper has prepared Canada for the recession. Let’s hope the three parties of fools don’t decide to take Canada hostage and destroy our chances of getting through it relatively unscathed.
> ...



Nice to see most of the Provinces are on line: Ontarians will have to grit their teeth but the rest of us will be fine.


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## a_majoor (30 Nov 2008)

A warning to everyone. Pass this article to your MP:

http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsCompleteList.aspx?TimePeriod=Current&Language=E

http://money.canoe.ca/News/Economy/2008/11/28/7569916-cp.html



> *Flaherty says stimulus could come if necessary, but economists warn against it*
> By Kristine Owram, THE CANADIAN PRESS
> 
> TORONTO - Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says his government is prepared to introduce a fiscal stimulus package if necessary in the 2009 budget, even if it means going into a deficit, but some economists say such a package could do more harm than good.
> ...


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## vangemeren (30 Nov 2008)

I would like direct evidence that the 2% increase was due to the tax cut (rather than just an assertion by a media) and not to growth of the commodity sector and why a gst cut was better than an income tax cut.

Just treating all media the same


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## Brad Sallows (30 Nov 2008)

No need.  It's unlikely in the extreme that the GST cut could be responsible for all growth; someone is confused about what various numbers actually mean.  And while economics has many controversial and opposed theories and ideas, the efficiency of income tax cuts over GST cuts is not really in serious dispute.   A GST cut is foremost a populist political move.  Secondarily, it provides a small (very small) benefit to those who pay no income taxes and thus would not benefit from an income tax cut.


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## vangemeren (4 Dec 2008)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> No need.  It's unlikely in the extreme that the GST cut could be responsible for all growth; someone is confused about what various numbers actually mean.  And while economics has many controversial and opposed theories and ideas, the efficiency of income tax cuts over GST cuts is not really in serious dispute.   A GST cut is foremost a populist political move.  Secondarily, it provides a small (very small) benefit to those who pay no income taxes and thus would not benefit from an income tax cut.



That's what I figured. 

Is there a consensus to what price oil has to be before people in Alberta really have to worry, I mean that has always been the Achilles tendon of the tar sands, was the higher production costs. I just ask this because the price of oil has been slumping.


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## Flip (6 Dec 2008)

The higher break even point for tar sands oil has been largely inflated because of the boom in oil sands activity.

Before the boom $40 -$50 per barrel oil was fine. Now we have some projects being shelved because the price is below $100. A labour cost correction will happen.

The length of time the oil stays low is also relevant.

Russia,Iran, and Venezuela all have big problems when oil is below $75 per barrel.

My guess, as long as the price of oil averages above $55 per barrel over the year, Alberta will be fine. 

In the longer term I think we can expect Oil to come back to $60 to $65 and Alberta will be fine with that too.......I hope anyway.

All of this just guessing.... ;D


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## Kirkhill (6 Dec 2008)

From the CBC in 2000 Flip:



> High oil prices boost Alberta surplus again
> Last Updated: Thursday, June 8, 2000 | 12:19 PM ET
> CBC News
> The provincial surplus could climb as high as $5 billion by the end of the fiscal year thanks to high oil prices, says Premier Ralph Klein.
> ...



Source

I also seem to recall that back in the 90s it was believed that $13 was the break even price on tar sands oil.  Inflation may have taken that up some but I think that technology will have done a bit of counteracting.


----------



## foresterab (8 Dec 2008)

The number I've been told is $26/barrel for established oilsands.  For all the new projects costs range significantly higher due to the wage inflation and labour shortages...living just a few hours away from the oilsands our labour costs are approx. 40% of those in Fort McMurray.

The other big inputs into the oilsands costs are wether upgrader facilities exist to convert the heavy crude to a more easily refined light crude oil.  This can be up to a 30% value difference....so if texas light crude (the benchmark) is at $60/barrel you might only be getting $40/barrel for your heavy crude.

Lastly..what is the natural gas price?  Huge amounts of natural gas is needed to create the steam used to "melt" the tar in many areas so it can be pumped out.

Many of the projects being delayed/shelved are due to the decline in oil prices and the huge run-up in costs estimated over the last 3-4 years....allow for things to calm down some and some will be re-initiated.


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## Flip (8 Dec 2008)

> This can be up to a 30% value difference....so if Texas light crude (the benchmark) is at $60/barrel you might only be getting $40/barrel for your heavy crude.
> 
> Lastly..what is the natural gas price?  Huge amounts of natural gas is needed to create the steam used to "melt" the tar in many areas so it can be pumped out.



You touch on a couple of points. Not all of the oil-sands product is heavy, much of it is upgraded low sulfur highly value added product. Oil comes and is sold in many grades and forms.

The Natural gas component is THE wild card. It's price hasn't plummeted like oil has and indeed is a highly desirable product in it's own right.  The nuclear reactor proposed would free up a lot of natural gas for more immediate uses, heating our homes for example.

The whole oil sands boom thing has been mismanaged in my opinion but the resource is still there and is still important.

Alberta's oil sector also supports oil production elsewhere. From Saskatchewan to just about every oil producing region on earth. 

Just a few thoughts.... ;D


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## Kirkhill (8 Dec 2008)

Flip said:
			
		

> The whole oil sands boom thing has been mismanaged in my opinion but the resource is still there and is still important.



Not picking here Flip, just an observation.

I've had the opportunity to see a couple of boom towns in a couple of industries.  I would suggest that you know the boom is over when the roads get paved.  Up until that time everybody is too busy grabbing what they can to initiate production to be worried about more than the most rudimentary infrastructure.

The highways, parks, schools and sewers all seem to come after the peak years are past.

I don't know that anybody ever manages a boom.


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## a_majoor (9 Dec 2008)

Making Canada Relevant the right way (no taxpayer dollars required!):

http://www.bluebloggingsoapbox.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2470:amazing&catid=17olitics



> *Amazing*
> Written by BBS
> Monday, 08 December 2008 07:09
> 
> ...



A bit of interpolation here. One securities regulator may or may not be a good idea (the United States has multiple regulators; ever wonder why so many companies are incorporated in the State of Delaware?), but killing the *one regulator* idea is a key concession the "Axis of the Inept" made to the BQ for support of the putative coalition government.


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## Edward Campbell (9 Dec 2008)

We need to be a bit careful in comparing Canadian and US agencies.

Incorporation, for example, is, in Canada, *largely* a national matter while securities regulation (e.g. the OSC) is provincial.

Incorporation in the US is, mainly, a state matter, while securities regulation (through the SEC) is national.

Generally OSC + various provincial 'sisters' ≈ SEC, and the Conservatives want to merge all (just almost all?) the Canadian ‘sisters’ into one agency that is comparable in reach and power to the US SEC and Australia’s ASIC.

It’s not east to make clear comparisons across national and sub-national boundaries.  I guess that’s why there are so many lawyers: they profit from the confusion.


----------



## Jed (9 Dec 2008)

A bit of a hijack here, but do we realise how difficult it has become to move from province to province in Canada now after our 911 experience?
It is not just moving your professional accreditation's it is also your driver licenses and insurances etc. Having had 5 provincial driver's licences and my 404s plus an international licence, it has become far easier to go from Jordan to Syria to Lebanon than to go from Alberta to Manitoba to Saskatchewan.
We really need to get more efficient crossing our own provincial borders. Incoming immigrants can get set up faster then a native Canadian in today's bureaucracies


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## Flip (9 Dec 2008)

> I don't know that anybody ever manages a boom.



Quite right...sorry ...I mis-spoke. :-[

I should have written that the accelerated development was mis-managed.  ;D

Funny you should mention highways......The Highway from Edmonton to Fort Mac is some 800km long and is still a two laner!  One lane all the way up and one lane all the way back.  The traffic, I've been told is heavy and treacherous.  Would this be appropriate, in one of the most paved provinces ?

The Alberta Environmetal Protection Agency may or may not have kept up....not sure. What I am aware of, is the controversy about tailings ponds and water usage.  Some of this is environmentalists' nonsense and propaganda i'm sure.

The City of Edmonton has had it's struggles as well - Rapid real estate development and then a bit of a bust.  Taxes go up because the tax rate is set by the value of the property.  The taxes on my small business have doubled!  Power and water rates are high......I could go on.... ;D

It's hard to run a business with all that instability.


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## a_majoor (10 Dec 2008)

An idea that should be given lots of traction here. Imagine if this is presented as the centerpiece of the government's "stimulus" package in Jan 2008?

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29733



> *Sign the 2-Month Tax Holiday Petition Today!*
> by  Human Events
> 12/02/2008
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (11 Dec 2008)

Rather than a two month tax holiday, the bureaucratic counter offer is tax snitches:

http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/12/feeling-the-hea.html



> *Feeling the heavy burden of taxation? Blame a businessman and snitch on your neighbour: Canada Revenue Agency*
> 
> You should pay your taxes. The consequences of not doing so are just too high. But when you do write that cheque to the government, take some time to consider that the burden of high taxation has been brought to you courtesy of a bloated public sector.
> 
> ...


----------



## Infanteer (13 Dec 2008)

Bullshit - what about the civic duty of paying one's taxes as prescribed by law?  Encouraging citizens to report tax evasion and fraud is a "Soviet Style tactic"?  Is Crimestoppers on the same boat?

Sounds like garbage commentary from the Western Standard to me.


----------



## a_majoor (2 Jan 2009)

This has been pointed out several times before, but the shift of population and GDP to the West is causing more divisions in the Canadian body politic:

http://unambig.wordpress.com/2009/01/02/this-recession-is-an-eastern-thing/



> *This “Recession” Is An Eastern Thing*
> January 2, 2009 — Raphael Alexander
> 
> Craig Offman of the National Post wrote just before the New Year an article about the balkanization of Canada being three solitudes: Ontario, Quebec, and Western Canada. The sinking of Ontario as the cash cow in Canada has ushered in a new era of importance to Western Canada, which is partially why the attempted usurpation of power by the coalition was so reviled by those west of Kenora. That the western provinces will be providing the stability that the Canadian economy needs at this time is clear, so why would it still make sense in anyone’s mind to consider a divisive coalition that would wrest the power from the main producers? It doesn’t, which is why the coalition will die here in 2009.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (7 Jan 2009)

The Governor makes many of the same points the Prime Minister does. Is the Governor Harper's "lap dog"?

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/opinion/mark-sanford-bailouts-010709



> *Choosing the Right Mechanic for America's Economy: Op-Ed*
> 
> In an exclusive response to a new Esquire.com column highlighting him and other "anti-bailout" conservatives, the governor of South Carolina offers three reasons why government intervention isn't the answer.
> 
> ...


----------



## observor 69 (7 Jan 2009)

Now a word from a Nobel Prize winning economist:

The New York Times
January 5, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Fighting Off Depression

By PAUL KRUGMAN
“If we don’t act swiftly and boldly,” declared President-elect Barack Obama in his latest weekly address, “we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment.” If you ask me, he was understating the case.

The fact is that recent economic numbers have been terrifying, not just in the United States but around the world. Manufacturing, in particular, is plunging everywhere. Banks aren’t lending; businesses and consumers aren’t spending. Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.

So will we “act swiftly and boldly” enough to stop that from happening? We’ll soon find out.

We weren’t supposed to find ourselves in this situation. For many years most economists believed that preventing another Great Depression would be easy. In 2003, Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago, in his presidential address to the American Economic Association, declared that the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many decades.”

Milton Friedman, in particular, persuaded many economists that the Federal Reserve could have stopped the Depression in its tracks simply by providing banks with more liquidity, which would have prevented a sharp fall in the money supply. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, famously apologized to Friedman on his institution’s behalf: “You’re right. We did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”

It turns out, however, that preventing depressions isn’t that easy after all. Under Mr. Bernanke’s leadership, the Fed has been supplying liquidity like an engine crew trying to put out a five-alarm fire, and the money supply has been rising rapidly. Yet credit remains scarce, and the economy is still in free fall.

Friedman’s claim that monetary policy could have prevented the Great Depression was an attempt to refute the analysis of John Maynard Keynes, who argued that monetary policy is ineffective under depression conditions and that fiscal policy — large-scale deficit spending by the government — is needed to fight mass unemployment. The failure of monetary policy in the current crisis shows that Keynes had it right the first time. And Keynesian thinking lies behind Mr. Obama’s plans to rescue the economy.

But these plans may turn out to be a hard sell.

News reports say that Democrats hope to pass an economic plan with broad bipartisan support. Good luck with that.

In reality, the political posturing has already started, with Republican leaders setting up roadblocks to stimulus legislation while posing as the champions of careful Congressional deliberation — which is pretty rich considering their party’s behavior over the past eight years.

More broadly, after decades of declaring that government is the problem, not the solution, not to mention reviling both Keynesian economics and the New Deal, most Republicans aren’t going to accept the need for a big-spending, F.D.R.-type solution to the economic crisis.

The biggest problem facing the Obama plan, however, is likely to be the demand of many politicians for proof that the benefits of the proposed public spending justify its costs — a burden of proof never imposed on proposals for tax cuts.

This is a problem with which Keynes was familiar: giving money away, he pointed out, tends to be met with fewer objections than plans for public investment “which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict ‘business’ principles.” What gets lost in such discussions is the key argument for economic stimulus — namely, that under current conditions, a surge in public spending would employ Americans who would otherwise be unemployed and money that would otherwise be sitting idle, and put both to work producing something useful.

All of this leaves me concerned about the prospects for the Obama plan. I’m sure that Congress will pass a stimulus plan, but I worry that the plan may be delayed and/or downsized. And Mr. Obama is right: We really do need swift, bold action.

Here’s my nightmare scenario: It takes Congress months to pass a stimulus plan, and the legislation that actually emerges is too cautious. As a result, the economy plunges for most of 2009, and when the plan finally starts to kick in, it’s only enough to slow the descent, not stop it. Meanwhile, deflation is setting in, while businesses and consumers start to base their spending plans on the expectation of a permanently depressed economy — well, you can see where this is going.

So this is our moment of truth. Will we in fact do what’s necessary to prevent Great Depression II?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/opinion/05krugman.html?_r=1


----------



## a_majoor (8 Jan 2009)

Paul Krugman has always called for higher taxation and greater nationalization of the economy. Nobel Prize or not, anyone versed in history can point out numerous examples of regimes that floundered due to excessive taxation and overregulated economies. The late Roman Empire is perhaps the earliest well documented example...

The key to understanding Mr Krugman's thesis lies in the remark:



> money that would otherwise be sitting idle, and put both to work producing something useful.



Money that would be sitting idle according to whom, and useful by what criterion?

Obviously Mr Krugman would have you believe that *he* knows better than you what to do with your earnings (after all, that is where the money is coming from), and is willing to use State power to *compel* you to turn your earnings over to him (or at least the Obama administration) so they can eat the fruits of your labour.

Simple math shows this is a very dangerous path to take; if Mr Krugman gets it wrong, there are no chances for recovery, while if the American people are entrusted with their earnings @ 300 million possible solutions that can be tried, even with a 50% success rate there are @ 150 million "winners" and the people who lost have 150 million possible saviours.... (For Canada the numbers are 30 million and 15 million respectively). The only part of the recovery package that will do any good is the $300 billion in tax cuts, trumping and extending the Bush era tax cuts.


----------



## observor 69 (8 Jan 2009)

Mr.Krugman is a believer in Keynesian economics. 

"In economics Keynesianism (pronounced /ˈkeɪnziən/, also Keynesian economics and Keynesian Theory), is based on the ideas of twentieth-century British economist John Maynard Keynes. According to Keynesian economics the state should stimulate economic growth and improve stability in the private sector - through, for example, interest rates, taxation and public projects."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian

In his columns and blog on the New York Times site he says it has been shown that the only effective option is for the government to spend money.

"Let’s lay out the basics here. Other things equal, public investment is a much better way to provide economic stimulus than tax cuts, for two reasons. First, if the government spends money, that money is spent, helping support demand, whereas tax cuts may be largely saved. So public investment offers more bang for the buck. Second, public investment leaves something of value behind when the stimulus is over."

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/


----------



## Edward Campbell (8 Jan 2009)

Baden  Guy said:
			
		

> Mr.Krugman is a believer in Keynesian economics.
> 
> "In economics Keynesianism (pronounced /ˈkeɪnziən/, also Keynesian economics and Keynesian Theory), is based on the ideas of twentieth-century British economist John Maynard Keynes. According to Keynesian economics the state should stimulate economic growth and improve stability in the private sector - through, for example, interest rates, taxation and public projects."
> 
> ...




And Keynesians *might be right* in countries with high savings rate like Japan and China and even, to a lesser degree, Canada, but the USA is pretty much the world's lousiest 'saver.' Americans are chronic *big spenders*, dangerously BIG spenders; the last things the USA needs is a big dose of John Maynard Keynes; the USA - people and government, alike - needs fiscal discipline.


----------



## Brad Sallows (8 Jan 2009)

>namely, that under current conditions, a surge in public spending would employ Americans who would otherwise be unemployed and money that would otherwise be sitting idle, and put both to work producing something useful.

When that was in vogue in the 1930's, the government could hand a bunch of unemployed guys some shovels and put them to work building WPA outhouses.  Useful work could be obtained at the expense of a very short learning curve.  What sorts of projects do these brilliant luminaries imagine that we have legions of appropriately-skilled workers ready to execute?  A "shovel ready" project is really one which is already in the preliminary stages of execution or is only waiting for overemployed labourers to finish whatever already occupies their overtime.

>First, if the government spends money, that money is spent, helping support demand, whereas tax cuts may be largely saved. So public investment offers more bang for the buck. Second, public investment leaves something of value behind when the stimulus is over

Those statements omit the problem of mis-spending the money and also fail to acknowledge the fact that a paid debt leaves the debt-holder with the cash to be "spent".  There is no law that public investment must leave something of value behind.

If you want me to spend $10, and you take away $10 from me and piss it away, now I have to come up with $20 to meet your aim: $10 to replace the $10 you destroyed that I did not want to spend, and $10 to spend.  That is what is going to happen when governments start throwing bags of money around, and the downturn will be accordingly prolonged.  Depend on it: the free market is to public bureaucratic centralized direction as manoeuvre warfare is to bataille conduit, aka methodical battle.

The proper way to solve the economic "crisis" is to leave people with more of their own money in their own hands until they have retired whatever amount of their own debt that they deem necessary in order to be confident to spend again.


----------



## Kirkhill (8 Jan 2009)

Maybe Keynes wasn’t quite the man I have been led to believe he was.

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

Author: John Maynard Keynes, Source: Economic Consequences of the Peace, pp. 235, 236, [1920]

“ “Never let a crisis go to waste” – Rahm Emmanuel 2007 (Reference Global Warming)

"Painful crisis also provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people," Obama said (http://tinyurl.com/67x8ec).

“This is not the first time a president chose reform over recovery. Franklin Roosevelt did it with his New Deal.......... Roosevelt's priorities were criticized .......by none other than John Maynard Keynes, the British economist whose theories rationalized big government. Before FDR had been in office a year, Keynes wrote him an open letter, which was printed in The New York Times: 

.... Keynes's concern. Government interventions, ....., "will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action." In other words, investors will not take the risks necessary for recovery if their profits and freedom are subject to unpredictable government action. Economic historian Roberts Higgs calls this phenomenon "regime uncertainty" (http://tinyurl.com/6cjyqb).

Keynes's letter apparently had little influence on Roosevelt, who stuck to his plan. In his second inaugural address a few years later, FDR feared that signs of recovery had jeopardized his reform plans by removing the sense of emergency: "To hold to progress today, however, is more difficult. Dulled conscience, irresponsibility and ruthless self-interest already reappear. Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster! Prosperity already tests the persistence of our progressive purpose." (Emphasis added.) (http://tinyurl.com/6j7ra8)” “  per John Stossel

Keynes appears to have been a temperate man who was disinclined to the drastic.  The worst thing that could happen to an economy in his opinion was a loss of confidence.  Once that occurred he does not seem to be a big supporter of intervention.
If anything he seems to have been disinclined to do anything other than let the market sort itself out – FDR and Paul Krugman notwithstanding.

On the other hand, those that wish to bring about radical change seem most in favour of bringing about a crisis in confidence.
Without running too far down the rabbit hole manufactured crises of confidence  are not unknown. 

It has been done with the Pound and with the Asian Tigers.


----------



## observor 69 (8 Jan 2009)

Well seeing as how I don't have a degree in economics I can't offer a professional rebuttal.
But two points made by Krugman come to mind. FDR quit the stimulus path to early and 

"Gurk! ZIRP!
That’s Zero Interest Rate Policy — which is now, in the wake of this morning’s terrible employment report, inevitable. Yes, we’re Japan.

Add to this the news of a retail sales collapse, and we’re looking grim, grim, grim.

Monetary policy obviously isn’t enough. It’s time to raise Keynes: we need big fiscal stimulus, now now now."

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/gurk-zirp/


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## a_majoor (9 Jan 2009)

FDR's "New Deal" lasted almost a decade, and the biggest collapse of industrial output during the Depression occurred in 1937. Good thing FDR quit "too early" or there would not have been much industrial plant left to prosecute the beginnings of WWII.

The argument that individuals saving money is somehow harmful to the economy is only valid *if the method of "saving" involves stuffing dollars into your mattress*. Even inefficient savings like an ordinary chequing account in the bank provides economic power, *you* might not get much out of it due to low interest and service charges, but the bank lends that money to others who *do* spend it (hopefully on useful goods and services like mortgages and "white goods", alternatively on commercial lending and credit).

*The real crunch is due to the fact that market signals are being obscured by government interventions* (AKA regulatory failure), which makes it difficult to determine who is credit worthy or if the money is actually being used to create new wealth and value. The nationalization of large sectors of the economy only *worsens* the situation (as any reader of Austrian School economics knows and understands). The true issue here isn't so much about promoting economic recovery as using the economic crisis to gain more control over the economy and hence you and me.


----------



## observor 69 (9 Jan 2009)

Do you work for the Fraser Institute by any chance ?  

While we could keep bouncing this topic back and forth I think it is obvious we come from two different schools of thought on economic recovery or just plain macro economics.

Guess which member of this panel I feel is on the wrong path,The National "Hard Times Hard Choices " THE BOTTOM LINE - PART 2, 
http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/hard_times_hard_choices/

Regards, BG


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## a_majoor (9 Jan 2009)

Baden  Guy said:
			
		

> Do you work for the Fraser Institute by any chance ?



If I did, I'd probably be paid more  ;D

While there are several schools of economics, I have chosen to follow the prescriptions of the Classical/Austrian schools because I am a student of history and also because I observed first hand the terrifying effects of Stagflation in the late 1970's (incidentally, I was taking introductory economics at that time and it was difficult to reconcile what I was seeing in the real world with the Keynesian economics we were being taught: specifically, Keynesian economics explicitly denies that such a thing as Stagflation is possible). The Reagan revolution of the 1980's demonstrated the real power of Classical economics, and it is difficult to argue with success



> *Seven Fat Years by Robert L. Bartley*
> 
> From Publishers Weekly
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (11 Jan 2009)

While pulling the plug might actually be an option, I suspect it will be far messier and more unsustainable than the blogger seems to think. (For those of you who are literary minded, see the last section of Atlas Shrugged as the American economy collapses under the pillage of the "looters", and devolves into piracy and warlordism. If you are not inclined to literature, I invite you to contemplate third world kleptocracies for real life examples). Being the strongest warlord in the valley *might* ensure your survival and standard of living after the collapse, but is hardly the nucleus of a future Libertarian paradise:

http://unambig.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/ontario-public-sector-unions-sucking-at-the-teats-of-the-motherland-sow/



> *Ontario Public Sector Unions: Sucking At The Teats Of The Motherland Sow*
> January 10, 2009 — Raphael Alexander
> 
> What, exactly, is wrong with the public sector unions of Ontario and the news that the province is perpetually under threat from some governmental body uninterested in healthy raises during an economic recession? Article after article is about some governmental branch or another, either provincial or municipal, having trouble with unions who don’t seem to recognize the kind of financial straits this nation is in, or else are willfully ignorant to it as they wallow in the trough of the Canadian taxpayer. As a worker of the private sector, I will be happy just to keep my current job in the marketplace, although I would even accept a pay cut if it meant avoiding the unemployment line. Fortunately my personal situation seems protected for the moment, but if I were promised a contract that included guaranteed raises on top of job security, I would be tripping over my own legs trying to run fast enough to sign it. But then again, I’m not enslaved to power hungry public sector unions for whom, apparently, too much is never enough:
> ...


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## a_majoor (8 Feb 2009)

How Republics die; how any human civilization dies:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=020609A



> *How Republics Die*
> Plato's Cautionary Tale
> By Mark J. Boone : 06 Feb 2009
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (10 Feb 2009)

While the article is about the US; the effectiveness of a "stimulous" package needs to be known and understood here since the Liberals AKA "the coalition" pressed for it and forced the minority government to create a deficit budget:

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/special-preview-stimulus--a-history-of-folly-14953



> SPECIAL PREVIEW Stimulus: A History of Folly
> James K. Glassman
> March 2009
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (18 Feb 2009)

Build on this idea: Canada is the North American tax haven:

http://thecanadianrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/02/america-all-of-your-businesses-will-be_18.html



> *America: All Of Your Businesses Will Be Ours*
> 
> Yes. Let's do this thing.
> 
> ...



Tell all your American friends.

Clearly, this will increase our productivity and attract American investors and skilled workers (bringing capital and skilled labour to Canada when we are running short). Increasing Canadian productivity will blunt the importation of American inflation, since inflation is too much money chasing too few goods (and with 82% of our exports going to America we will be importing inflation). All in all, a win/win scenario.


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## Kirkhill (28 Feb 2009)

Just got through reading this  WSJ article:

"A Resolute Ally in the War on Terror Canadians are with us in Afghanistan. We should be with them on free trade"

A generally flattering piece.

A thought flitted.....

If the Yanks are going to be hard pressed for the time being, maybe now is the time for Canadians to send steel to India and have Indians build ships to ship raw materials to India where they can turn them into goods for the Canadian and Indian and international markets.

We have the resources.  They have the market that would supply the economies of scale.

Why not China? Because China has already established itself as a rising statist champion.....and I don't like that.

India has tried statism, decided that Laski got it all wrong, and that their wallah-culture (dhobi-wallahs, pani-wallahs.....) is more in tune with entrepreneurial capitalism.  Hence the success of micro-credit out there.

For the military oriented types around here, such an economic strategy would also put pressure on the need for a naval force to protect all that commerce.


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## a_majoor (28 Feb 2009)

And of course the middle class population of India is @ 300 million; the same as the entire population of the United States (and we know where the numbers will go WRT middle class Americans); a huge market for our resources and value added products indeed.

The real difficulty might be getting those 300 million Indians to pay attention to the economic activities of the 30 million of us!


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## Kirkhill (1 Mar 2009)

I'm betting that resources will sell..... resources that will help those 300 million achieve their aspirations.

Somebody said something about butchers and bakers and not appealing to their conscience but their interests.


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## a_majoor (4 Mar 2009)

Ontario sends the economy further downhill:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/03/03/terence-corcoran-ontario-s-green-energy-plan-sneaks-in-feed-in-taxes.aspx



> *Terence Corcoran: Ontario's green energy plan sneaks in feed-in taxes*
> Posted: March 03, 2009, 7:49 PM by NP Editor
> Terence Corcoran, Green Energy Act
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (10 Mar 2009)

So vast sums of money are being bandied about as "Stimulus" (or "Porkulus" if you prefer). Here is a visual aid to see what millions, billions or trillions actually look like:

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html


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## Edward Campbell (10 Aug 2009)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_ is an opinion piece by Canadian historian (and occasional Army.ca contributor) J.L. Granatstein  that ought to provoke some discussion:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/so-were-not-a-great-power-big-deal-lets-be-a-great-nation/article1245345/


> So, we're not a great power. Big deal – let's be a great nation
> *Greatness demands self-knowledge, regrettably a thing Canadians often lack*
> 
> J.L. Granatstein
> ...



Prof. Granatstein lays out some undeniable _roadblocks_ to *great power* status:

•	Small population;

•	Great geographic dispersion which equates to too few concentrations of population; and

•	Québec – which is a huge (nearly 25% of the population, about 20% of GDP) _anchor_ that keeps Canada moored, firmly, in the “little Canada,” isolationist shallows in which the Canadian political centre has wallowed for a century.

So how to we become a *great nation* even as we recognize that we cannot be a *great power*?

We need to start, Granatstein suggests, with one of the things we lack: self knowledge.  Then Canada needs to, in Granatstein’s words:

1.	Maximize its potential;

2.	Better the economic and social well-being of its people;

3.	Protects them _[its people]_ from the threats of others;

4.	Jealously guards its sovereignty; and

5.	Play a responsible role in the global community.

Numbers 3, 4 and 5 all have a strong military component, and so, to a lesser extent, do 1 and even 2.

This, the explicit call to increase our military presence in the world, in furtherance of our own self interest, will infuriate the large, diverse “little Canada” crowd. This group is not equated, just, to Québec – indeed Québecers *are interventionist* when they perceive that their (French speaking) interests are at stake – as in Haiti and _Franco-Afrique_, for example. The “hard core” of the Liberal/NDP left, in fact, is in Toronto, _Anglo_-Montreal, Vancouver and Winnipeg; that they make common cause with the left wing BQ on foreign and defence policy issues is, simply, an alliance of convenience. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” sort of thing.

But that “little Canada” crowd is large – it may actually approach a *majority* position in Canada, less evident in electoral politics because urban (often “left wing”) ridings are seriously underrepresented in our parliament while rural (often “right wing”) ridings are grossly overrepresented.

The solution begins, as Prof. Granatstein suggests, with “self knowledge,” and that begins in classrooms. But the requisite “self knowledge” is never going to materialize so long as the _educrat_ establishment in Victoria, Winnipeg, Toronto, Québec City and Halifax remains a captive of the ill-educated, economically and historically illiterate, historically and socially particularist “left” – as is now the case.


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## Edward Campbell (26 Aug 2009)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _National Post_ is a bit of common sense from a _usual_ source of that rare commodity:
> 
> http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/08/22/conrad-black-much-ado-about-china.aspx
> The key points, it seems to me, are:
> ...



This *opinion*, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_ is related to a lot more than just health care:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/americas-an-argument-that-never-ends/article1264167/


> America's an argument that never ends
> *Canadians keep their voices down for fear an honest argument would wreck the country*
> 
> John Ibbitson
> ...



I’m with Ibbitson on this one. Making Canada *great* would be nice but keeping Canada together is the first challenge or obstacle, depending upon one’s point of view.

One of the obstacles to greatness and unity that Granatstein and Ibbitson identified is the huge disconnect between “English” Canada and Québec.

Canada is, economically, “sound.” Not “good,” just, perhaps, _good enough_; but we could be and should be much better. Once again, one of the problems, is the _national_ disconnect in so many areas, including, for example, the regulation of securities and markets. We need a national securities regulator; Québec will not participate; the obvious solution is go ahead without Québec, the only “victim” would be the Montreal Stock Exchange which would lose so much value that it would almost cease to exist – something that would provoke yet another _national_ crisis that would, in turn, require yet more compromise.

And so it goes.


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## Monsoon (28 Aug 2009)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> We need a national securities regulator; Québec will not participate; the obvious solution is go ahead without Québec, the only “victim” would be the Montreal Stock Exchange which would lose so much value that it would almost cease to exist – something that would provoke yet another _national_ crisis that would, in turn, require yet more compromise.


I agree that a national securities regulator would be better, but it would be easy to understate the extent to which the existing provincial regulators work together through the Canadian Securities Administrators. They have all managed to essentially harmonize their regulations (at least in the broad strokes) through National Instruments, though the real hold-out to harmonization isn't the _Autorite des marches financiers_, but the Ontario Securities Commission. Quebec has launched an appeal against the Federal government setting up a national regulator and I hope they lose, but things are much better now than they were ten years ago.

The Montreal Stock Exchange hasn't existed for a great many years, and the Montreal Exchange (derivatives only) is owned by the same company that holds the TSX. The launch of a federal regulator (_sans_ Quebec participation) would have little effect on the MX, as long as the securities issuers complied with both the federal and Quebec securities laws when they sell to investors in either jurisdiction. This is exactly how the MX and TSX deal with the current fractured regulatory regime.


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## Edward Campbell (28 Aug 2009)

hamiltongs said:
			
		

> I agree that a national securities regulator would be better, but it would be easy to understate the extent to which the existing provincial regulators work together through the Canadian Securities Administrators. They have all managed to essentially harmonize their regulations (at least in the broad strokes) through National Instruments, though the real hold-out to harmonization isn't the _Autorite des marches financiers_, but the Ontario Securities Commission. Quebec has launched an appeal against the Federal government setting up a national regulator and I hope they lose, but things are much better now than they were ten years ago.
> 
> The Montreal Stock Exchange hasn't existed for a great many years, and the Montreal Exchange (derivatives only) is owned by the same company that holds the TSX. The launch of a federal regulator (_sans_ Quebec participation) would have little effect on the MX, as long as the securities issuers complied with both the federal and Quebec securities laws when they sell to investors in either jurisdiction. This is exactly how the MX and TSX deal with the current fractured regulatory regime.




Thanks. I knew the TSX had bought the MX. I had forgotten (maybe never noticed) that the MX was trading in derivatives only - likely because my portfolio didn't have any derivatives. (It is managed by one of the very few firms that eschewed them.)  I should take more care with the examples I choose.


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## Edward Campbell (29 Aug 2009)

This _Globe Essay_ by veteran journalist and former NDP candidate Michael Valpy, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, calls to mind an argument by Michael Bliss about “old Canada” vs. “new Canada:”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/is-this-the-end-of-the-age-of-our-social-cohesion/article1269043/


> Is this the end of the age of our social cohesion?
> *Discrepancies in recent poll results may be a symptom of increasing fragmentation in Canadian society, rather than of any fault in the methods of data collection. It is harder to find a representative sample when people actually have less and less in common*
> 
> Michael Valpy
> ...



Some, likely many, will take issue with Valpy’s (self serving) explanation of the media’s role in _informing_ opinion. I do not. For a very long time the media, in various forms, including bards and minstrels, presented fairly (internally) consistent and coherent _explanations_ of the issues of the day. There were, and are, usually, healthy _partisan_ differences between different media “brands” but, by and large, the mainstream media tried to separate news from opinion – often they succeeded. The end result was that most Canadians, regardless of region or language, had a fairly “common” big picture. But despite having a “common” base of information Canadians still divided themselves into what Bliss described as “old Canada” – everything East of the Ottawa River and “new Canada” – Ontario and the West and the North,* because, in part, as Prof. Gene Allen (Ryerson) said, we don’t use the common information in a common way. Bliss’ explanation of “old” vs. “new” was, essentially, attitudinal and was reflected in how they views what Valpy calls _” Pearson-Trudeau progressive statism.”_ The thesis is that “old Canada” embraces it and “new Canada” rejects it. _Statism_, of any sort, equals economic and, indeed, social stagnation. Québec is one of the most enthusiastically _statist_ societies in the Western world; it is also one of the least “attractive” to business, capital and entrepreneurial immigrants. It, like (most? all?) other _statist_ societies, is in a long, steady, albeit reversible decline.

The reasons for the “cleavage” are many and varied and Valpy gets some of them right. What he gets wrong is Berlin’s view of the “sense of belonging.” Berlin most certainly did not believe, as Valpy appears to, that we have to have some sort of “common” view or even a “common”: base of information for our views. Berlin was a true *liberal* – see, elsewhere, my comments on Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty” – who was, broadly, offended by Valpy’s views of society and politics.

The “real” situation is that, over the centuries, “our” (Anglo-American) attitudes and politics swing, constantly, to and fro – not like a simple clock pendulum but, rather, like a conical pendulum. We do not just swing from economic left to right, we swing from liberal to conservative, even to _big government/big spending conservatism_ à la George W. Bush, and we swing (often very, very quickly) from bold to timid, and so on.







That is ongoing, today, in Canada and Valpy examines one “point” on a very complex, non-linear, moving pattern. The current “point” we are, for the moment, is, in Valpy’s words, where we are relatively evenly split between

•	“The open cosmopolitans [who] are extremely receptive to diversity, immigration and the outside world and hold generally progressive views on issues such as foreign policy”; and

•	“The continental conservatives [who] are comfortable with current government directions and see Canada being more closely drawn into a North American partnership”.

What frightens Valpy (and the Liberals and NDP) is that the “open cosmopolitans” are not guaranteed Liberal or NDP voters but the “continental conservatives” are highly likely to vote *anything but* BQ/Liberal/NDP.  


--------------------
* I cannot find the Bliss item – I’m about 99% sure it was Bliss. It was published at least ten years ago and I’m sure I saved a copy but I’m guessing that hard drive crashed a few years ago and I probably didn’t put everything from the backup on to a newer drive. Pity.


----------



## Edward Campbell (29 Aug 2009)

Speaking of Michael Bliss, this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from The _National Post_ but archived on hydro, is a Bliss opinion piece from late 2001:



> Is Canada a country in decline?
> *There was a time when the future of this blessed land looked hopeful.
> But when we write the history of the past 30 years, it will be a sad
> story of squandered opportunity*
> ...




It would be groslly unfair to describe Prof. Bliss as anything except a *conservative* and *Conservative* historian. His distaste for the Liberals was/is quite well known.

I expect that he feels sadly vindicated when he re-reads these words:



> None of Mr. Chrétien's probable successors is likely seriously to change direction, seriously to upset the status quo. It's a comfortable kind of life up here in the northern backwater, not exciting or challenging, not so affluent, but not so stressful either.


----------



## a_majoor (29 Aug 2009)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> The end result was that most Canadians, regardless of region or language, had a fairly “common” big picture. But despite having a “common” base of information Canadians still divided themselves into what Bliss described as “old Canada” – everything East of the Ottawa River and “new Canada” – Ontario and the West and the North,* because, in part, as Prof. Gene Allen (Ryerson) said, we don’t use the common information in a common way.



Robert Kaplan made a similar observation:


> Officers at Levensworth read "_The Economist_" and "_Foreign Affairs_" and watch "_The Newshour with Jim Lehrer_", but that does not mean they interpret the information the way civilian policy makers and people in the media do. However sophisticated the reading lists, the people doing the reading here often come from rural, blue collar America.
> 
> "It matters less what you read than where you you live and where you come from, because that determines how you interpret knowledge", explained Major Susan P Kellett-Forsyth, one of the first female graduates of West Point."


An Empire Wilderness; page 11


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## Kirkhill (29 Aug 2009)

This author has long been out of favour in Canada - and yet I find Ignatieff and Valpy both echoing his century old observation.



> The Stranger within my gate,
> He may be true or kind,
> But he does not talk my talk—
> I cannot feel his mind.
> ...



Rudyard Kipling "The Vancouver World" April 1908  

Ever since that poem was published the Liberal (Large L Edward) establishment has been doing its best to dispute the observation described in the first 4 verses fearing that the prescription offered in the fifth verse is the only one available.  I don't dispute the observation.  I do dispute the prescription.  But I fear that many others accept the prescription - and in particular that is true of the BQ.

I still stand by an oft repeated position of mine, which Valpy echoes repeating Carey's observation on papers and the mass, that Canada's divisions are not to be found in language but in religion.  

One portion of our intellectual heritage is convinced of the need for a common message.  Without a commonality of understanding then there no future but that of disorder and chaos.  This is the view, in my opinion, of the Michael Valpys of the world, with their statist bent: a view that finds favour amongst the intellectual class, the university class, the bureaucratic class, the media - the canting classes.  They find kindred spirits in the Ancien Regime, the Dominie and the Episcopalian Church - Anglican, Roman or Lutheran.  This was Trudeau's world.

The other day, flipping channels, I came across one of those roundtables beloved of the media where they interview themselves (circlejerks of a sort) and bemoan the state of the world.  Before I passed on to the next station to get a fill of T&A I heard one individual declaring that the problem with the new media is that everybody works in isolation.  In the good old days you could bounce ideas off the herd to determine if you were on the right track - or, as I might better put it, were thinking correctly.  In such manner were heresies prevented.

The other portion of our heritage derives from a school that throve on chaos and disorder,  that embraced varying and constantly dividing views, that gave us Presbyterians, Calvinists, Baptists, Methodists, Anabaptists, Southern Methodists, Wee Free and Wiccans but also gave us the free spirited, freedom loving, capitalist society that built the current world order.  Edit - I could/should add that the list of splintering groups includes various non-spiritual groups including the invisible college, the Royal Society, the Masons, the Hellfire club, the Elks, Lions, Rotarians and Kiwanis, the Labour party, the Socialist, Anarchist and Communist Internationals and all our modern political parties and NGOs

Interestingly that world began with the clarion call of an Edinburgh fish wife who, objecting to the service at her church, picked up her stool and threw it at the offending priest shouting :  Wha daur say MASS in my lug*.

There you find the true divide between the statist and the individualist ( I leave it to Edward and Thucydides to parse the beauties of liberalism and libertarianism).

* for the uncivilized amongst you that don't understand guid Scots - Who dares to say Mass in my ear.


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## a_majoor (30 Aug 2009)

Kirkhill gives me a lovely opening to move into the topic of "Civic Nationalism".

Since the idea of Civic Nationalism is based on the concept of common systems of beliefs, it should be quite clear that Canada is never going to be able to create a strong sense of "Canadian Identity" under the current prevailing beliefs of "Official Multiculturalism" or the ingrained belief that Quebec must be accommodated for partisan political purposes.

There is a giant wellspring of resistance to "Civic Nationalism" in Canada, at least among the political and media elites, as could be seen by the heaps of scorn and disdain poured on the Reform Party and their calls for all Canadians to be treated equally (ending regional and ethnic based programs, for example). Most Canadians did not see this issue as being important enough to make Reform more than the opposition party, and the lure of getting benefits paid for by someone else was also far more powerful than arresting the slow decline of Canada as a political, economic or even cultural entity.


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## Edward Campbell (1 Sep 2009)

See here for some background.

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _National Post_ is some good advice from columnist Don Martin:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/08/31/alberta-to-u-s-use-the-oilsands-or-lose-them.aspx


> Alberta to U.S.: Use the oil sands or lose them
> 
> August 31, 2009
> 
> ...




A trans-mountain pipeline, a (Canadian) Pacific petro-port and increased oil and natural gas exports to China are all good policy. They require the Government-of-Canada to “stand up” to the USA – always *good politics* and to support (spend money on) a new pipeline – never a wholly popular (but always inflationary) course of action. 

I understand I have posted bits about this “topic” (China/oilsands) in three separate areas during one morning but it touches several areas of interest.


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## Edward Campbell (9 Sep 2009)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_ is an important column/book review by Neil Reynolds:






http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/canadas-downward-path-from-nation-to-fiction/article1280143/


> Canada's downward path from nation to fiction
> *'Canada is no longer a community of strongly held principles. It's as simple as that'*
> 
> Neil Reynolds
> ...



More about Brian Lee Crowley can be found here. 

*Everything* wasn’t perfect or right or even pretty good prior to Pearson/Trudeau but they, Trudeau especially, did, indeed, overturn the socio-economic/political applecart and they, again Trudeau especially, did create a corrosive, destructive _culture of entitlement_ taking us from being a _”society of makers”_ and turning us into a _”society of takers.”_

If we cannot fix the (relatively few) really important bits that Trudeau broke – and I’m not convinced we can – then Canada, as a modern, prosperous, sophisticated, wealthy, capitalist nation-state is doomed.


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## GAP (9 Sep 2009)

I would submit that sovereignty in its various guises (Quebec/Western Alienation/Pacific) will break this country apart within the next 50 years, with much of the good producing parts coopted into the U.S.. The rest will cling to a memory, but basically be disfunctional....


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## Edward Campbell (12 Sep 2009)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, is the second half of Neil Reynolds’ comments on Brian Lee Crowley’s new book _ Fearful Symmetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada's Founding Values_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/demographics-dictate-a-return-to-traditional-values/article1283358/


> Demographics dictate a return to traditional values
> *People will need to work longer and harder, which will restore the ethic that once made Canadians an extraordinarily productive people*
> 
> Neil Reynolds
> ...



I just started Crowleys’ book so I cannot, yet, comment on his projections, but: *immigration* – highly focused, well managed immigration – can make a big difference.

One problem I think I see with our immigration “system” is that is accepts the fact that too many Canadians are viscerally afraid of immigrants from East and South Asia.

They (Canadians) are afraid of East and South Asian *cultural values* that are inconsistent with Trudeau’s _culture of entitlement_ that made us a “society of takers” instead of a “society of makers.” They are afraid of the strong “family values” that help so many East and South Asian students do so well in school and, therefore, get the best jobs.

Canadians are less afraid of Africans and Latin Americans because they suspect, maybe just hope, that they (Africans and Latin Americans) are less capable than the Asians.


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## foresterab (12 Sep 2009)

Town I just moved from...located in north rural Alberta (oil and gas, tourism, and forestry town) was 10% Filipino born.  

And people were afraid of them...but they worked harder and better than many Canadians to the point many local companies had stopped advertising jobs locally and went straight overseas.

A little competition for work is a good thing.
foresterab


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## Kat Stevens (13 Sep 2009)

I moved to Westlock 7 years ago.  There was a Korean family that owned a gas station, and a Pakistani family that owned a hardware store.  That was it.  Probably the whitest place I've ever lived.  Today I look around town, and there is a considerable Philippine presence,  along with quite a few Mexicans.  In a few short years the spectrum  has shifted quite dramatically.


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## Edward Campbell (13 Sep 2009)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_ web site, is a good question:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/four-elections-six-years-is-canada-broken/article1286163/


> Four elections. Six years. Is Canada broken?
> *As the Canadian political establishment prepares for yet another vote, with no real issue at stake, our country's major concerns are left to languish*
> 
> John Ibbitson
> ...




Ibbitson is right to highlight the splits, which go beyond Québec and Canada.

I think there is a way, in the future, for either the Conservatives or the Liberals to become the _natural governing party_. It involves *rejecting* Québec and _Québec Inc_ and the "Québec model" and, to a less extent, Atlantic Canada. It involves *investing* money and ideas and people where there is some “return on investment” and ignoring, even _punishing_ regions and sectors that do not provide adequate “return.”

One area where we get a very, very bad “return on investment” is in government, itself. We need, fairly desperately, wholesale cuts in *most* of the government. The *majority* of Canadian government departments and agencies are somewhere between bloated and inefficient, at the “good" end, and perfectly bloody useless, a total and complete waste of money at the other. The problem is *not* stupid, lazy bureaucrats – most of the people upon whom most of the money is wasted are intelligent and hard working but the “work” they do is useless, it produces nothing of value, in fact it produces nothing at all, and, for that reason, tens and tens of thousands of well paid, hard working civil servants are a drag on our national productivity because they are wasting money and failing to do anything useful in other, worthwhile, productive jobs.


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## Edward Campbell (14 Sep 2009)

Here, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, is sone good sense from _Parson_ Preston Manning:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/how-do-we-recover-from-the-recovery/article1284864/


> How do we recover from the recovery?
> *The last time, it took 14 years and a great deal of public pressure to eliminate the deficit. Maybe a road map will help this time*
> 
> Preston Manning
> ...



First: deficits are not always ”bad,” sometimes (1930s and 40s) they are both “good” and absolutely essential.

Second: deficits *must, always* be temporary. The long, long period of structural – and quite unnecessary – deficits run up by Trudeau and sustained by Trudeau, Mulroney and Chrétien was bad, even horrible public policy.

(In fairness, Mulroney “settled” the “programme spending deficit” – his government collected more in taxes than it spent on programmes (like health care, defence or aboriginals) – but he could not bring himself to tackle the “debt service deficit” in which we saw the _miracle of compound interest_ drive us, nearly, to third world status. In his defence, _ordinary Canadians_ like Solange Denis* made it politically impossible for him to tackle the “root cause” of our problems: excessive _social_ programme spending.)

The inflationary impact from the _stimulus_ and deficits caused by irresponsible social spending is a far greater threat to Canada than is the (temporary) higher than normal unemployment or the asset “value” loss in 2008/09/10.


--------------------
* “Mention the name Solange Denis in Ottawa, and finance department officials are likely to wince. She is the feisty senior who ambushed Brian Mulroney on Parliament Hill in 1985 and berated him for trying to cut pension benefits after he had promised not to touch them. Mulroney promptly backed away from the cuts ... Eleven years later, Martin took the trouble to stage a photo opportunity with Denis so reporters could record her nod of approval for the way he was handling pension cuts. He had to show that a fiscally responsible government could also be compassionate.”
_Are we in store for some intergenerational warfare?_  Charlotte Gray, _Canadian Medical Association Journal_, 1997


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## Edward Campbell (16 Sep 2009)

This is not about economics but it is about “making Canada relevant again.”

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, is a useful *editorial*:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/big-canada-needs-a-clearer-vision/article1289225/


> [/b\Globe Editorial[/b]
> Big Canada needs a clearer vision
> *Michael Ignatieff needs to marshal an overall narrative, and the courage of his convictions, if he wants Canada to have an ambitious place in the world*
> 
> ...




I have, over and over again, referred Army.ca readers to former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s _vision_, articulated in his foreword to the _International Policy Statement_ (not quite a _White Paper_) *”A Role of Pride and Influence in the World*. Now *that* was _”an admirable, wide-ranging canvass about how “it is time for the world to be at the centre of our national conversation, not the margins””_ and it stood _”squarely in the Liberal internationalist tradition of Pearson (multilateralism, peacekeeping), with a good measure of Chrétienism (Team Canada trade missions, African investment) thrown in.”_  _Iggy_’s _Prince Icarus_’ loosey-goosey _ramble_ around the issues didn’t measure up.

Prime Minister Harper’s foreign policy has been marked, in the main, by fits and starts – the “starts” headed off in all directions. That’s because he is, at heart, unconcerned about foreign policy (and, therefore, even less concerned about defence policy and military matters). It doesn’t fit in his “national vision.”

We, as a country, need a sensible and sensibly modest (to start) foreign policy that is rooted in Louis St Laurent’s Grey Lecture (1947/University of Toronto) that defined for the first and perhaps the last time a coherent foreign policy.

*“We can do better,“* _Prince Icarus_, starting with you, and you, too, Prime Minister Harper.


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## a_majoor (16 Sep 2009)

Moving back a bit to the arguments presented here, I would have to disagree that the coming demographic crash and financial ruination of the Welfare State will cause Canadians to embrace the old values and the culture of pre 1968 Canada.

The premise seems to be based on the idea that we can just pick up where we left off, despite many generations of Canadians being raised in the culture of the Welfare State. While there are a few hold outs among the population, they are neither numerous enough or concentrated in a large enough area to really provide a nucleus for this Renaissance to take place across Canada. The argument is about culture, but culture is based on the common beliefs that people hold. Since Canada has little in the way of Civic Nationalism to hold it together, the ruination of the Welfare State will mean people will probably turn to their regions for identity.

The othger depressing factor is history simply does not show any real examples of cultural "resetting" happening. I suspect the end of Canada will mirror the end of the _Res Publica Roma_ as the political class fights over the scraps and enlists the population to join in scavenging over the spoils. (Remember the _Res Publica Roma_ended in a series of civil wars, and we have seen supposedly civilized nations suddenly disintigrate into violence in our own lifetimes [many of us have even served in these places]). Whatever emerges from the end of the Canadian welfare state will resembel Canada about as much as the _Imperium_ resembled the _Res Publica_

Even if we don't devolve into violent confrontations with our neighbours, many provinces and regions have the economic ability to survive as prosperous nations in their own right if they "cut loose" from the rest of Canada. Quebec might discover Sovereignty actually means Alberta is no longer willing to pay for their social programs, and the Maritimes will see their standard of living shrivel as they get thrown to the wolves (and the United States politely declines to accept them). Ontario might or might not be able to cut a deal with the West or the United States, maybe we will become a so-so principality in the middle of North America as well.

A well ordered draw down of the welfare state is our only "out", but I see few social, political or cultural beacons in that direction.


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## a_majoor (20 Sep 2009)

More about the culture wars that threaten our collective future:

http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2009/09/root-cause-of-our-turmoil.html



> *The root cause of our turmoil*
> 
> Richard Fernandez makes the compelling case that the root of the conflict we see developing in this country is caused by a struggle for wealth and power. The most salient feature of the Obama administration is its concentration of the national wealth and power in this country into Washington, and more specifically in the hands of the President.
> 
> ...



Canada is also suffering from this, with political and economic power concentrated in Ottawa and the provincial capitals and a few self appointed "elite" institutions. Even the CPC, the political party which _should_ be philosophically dedicated to devolving bureaucracies and centralized power is pretty happy running the country from the PMO bunker, and the LPC or members of the "Coalition" are certainly dedicated to the idea of centralization.


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## Edward Campbell (22 Sep 2009)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Ottawa Citizen_ is an interesting take on Canada/US relations:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Take+advantage+Obama+effect/2018400/story.html


> Take advantage of the Obama effect
> *A close relationship with the U.S. is no longer a liability for Canadian governments -- this is a good chance to address Canadian interests*
> 
> By Colin Robertson, Citizen Special
> ...



I think:

1.	Canadians are making _waaaay_ too much about Buy America. Nothing “we” (anyone in Canada) does will make any difference at all in the USA. This (Buy America) is popular and “we” don’t vote. Canadians should calm down because Buy America will die a natural death because it is ineffective;

2.	We need to address one key issue: _erasing the border_! We need to _harmonize_ a whole host of standards and tariffs with the USA (almost done, by the way) so that goods, from anywhere in the world, can cross the Canada/US border without hindrance. Then, much more difficult, we need to _harmonize_ immigration, refugee and *tourist* “standards” so that any person who enters Canada can enter the USA without hindrance and _vice versa_. That will, _de facto_, remove any particular “need” for a border – except for a few “spot check” and policing tasks; and

3.	We need to “sell” the Canadian “brand” – close, friendly/cousins, *trustworthy*, burden sharers with “safe” oil to sell, and so on.  That means hiring/paying big *American* PR and lobby firms to _brand_ Canada and _sell_ Canada in Washington DC, and in Fort Kent, Maine, San Diego California, Key West, Florida, Blaine, Washington and all points in between.


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## GAP (22 Sep 2009)

I wonder what David Emerson is doing now?

(_In 2008, Emerson joined private equity firm CAI Capital Management as a senior advisor.

Emerson's directorships included: Terasen Inc; Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Company of Canada; Vice-Chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives; Chair, British Columbia Ferry Services Inc.; and Chairman and Director of Genus Resource Management Technologies Inc._)


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## Larkvall (22 Sep 2009)

> 2.   We need to address one key issue: erasing the border! We need to harmonize a whole host of standards and tariffs with the USA (almost done, by the way) so that goods, from anywhere in the world, can cross the Canada/US border without hindrance. Then, much more difficult, we need to harmonize immigration, refugee and tourist “standards” so that any person who enters Canada can enter the USA without hindrance and vice versa. That will, de facto, remove any particular “need” for a border – except for a few “spot check” and policing tasks; and



The second half of number 2 is giving up far too much in my opinion.

Erasing the border gives me Mulroney flashbacks....

I can't see the Americans going for any of it.


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## GAP (22 Sep 2009)

Larkvall said:
			
		

> The second half of number 2 is giving up far too much in my opinion.
> 
> Erasing the border gives me Mulroney flashbacks....
> 
> I can't see the Americans going for any of it.



Sure they can...just tell their satellite companies to come home and we become a banana republic democracy......


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## Edward Campbell (22 Sep 2009)

Larkvall said:
			
		

> The second half of number 2 is giving up far too much in my opinion.
> 
> Erasing the border gives me Mulroney flashbacks....
> 
> I can't see the Americans going for any of it.




Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the OpEdNews web site (a self described _progressive_ and _liberal_ site) is a not terribly _friendly_ analysis of the North American Integration _project_:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/North-American-Integration-by-Dana-Gabriel-090702-167.html


> North American Integration: Deep-Rooted Agenda Continues
> 
> By Dana Gabriel
> 
> ...



The *problem* for North American Integration is Mexico. It cannot be _integrated_ for the foreseeable future and involving the Mexicans in serious negotiations means they are doomed to fail.

But I’m guessing that serious negotiations are underway, involving only Americans and Canadians. I doubt that any *officials*, _per se_, are involved but the sorts of private citizens who I’m guessing are doing the negotiating are accustomed to getting official blessings for their work without too much problem.

There is a strong _continentalist_ contingent in each of the Conservative and Liberal Parties in Canada. Those _constinentalist_ contingents are well balanced, in both parties, by isolationists. There are also _continentalists_ (and plenty of isolationists, too) amongst the Democrats and Republicans in the USA, especially in the many and varied think-tanks.


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## Larkvall (22 Sep 2009)

> But I’m guessing that serious negotiations are underway, involving only Americans and Canadians. I doubt that any officials, per se, are involved but the sorts of private citizens who I’m guessing are doing the negotiating are accustomed to getting official blessings for their work without too much problem.
> 
> There is a strong continentalist contingent in each of the Conservative and Liberal Parties in Canada. Those constinentalist contingents are well balanced, in both parties, by isolationists. There are also continentalists (and plenty of isolationists, too) amongst the Democrats and Republicans in the USA, especially in the many and varied think-tanks.



Oh, I am sure that people are talking about it no doubt. I believe their time might be better spent learning Mandarin though. 
From personal experience I can tell you the US was protectionist BEFORE the recent down turn. The protectionists would never go for it now.
Also, the US is a less attractive a partner than she was in the Mulroney era. Big deficits as far as the eye can see, big debt and the US dollar's status as THE reserve currency is waning. For all the talk that has been going on we now require a passport to go to the US. The cost of not being able to control our own immigration is far too much a price alone.


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## Edward Campbell (22 Sep 2009)

Larkvall said:
			
		

> Oh, I am sure that people are talking about it no doubt. I believe their time might be better spent learning Mandarin though.
> From personal experience I can tell you the US was protectionist BEFORE the recent down turn. The protectionists would never go for it now.
> Also, the US is a less attractive a partner than she was in the Mulroney era. Big deficits as far as the eye can see, big debt and the US dollar's status as THE reserve currency is waning. For all the talk that has been going on we now require a passport to go to the US. The cost of not being able to control our own immigration is far too much a price alone.




Good points and the US problem with millions, maybe tens of millions, of illegal immigrants from Latin America, who would presumably, be able to enter Canada pretty much freely, is another major stumbling block.

But I still remain committed to "erasing the border" as an important step in improving our (North American) productivity (poor in Canada) and competitiveness.


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## a_majoor (26 Sep 2009)

Hopefully, this lesson will be raised to prevent any future "stimulus" programs from plundering the taxpayers wallets. (OK, so it still is a nice dream to have):

http://www.officiallyscrewed.com/blog/?p=1264



> *Beckbytes: Arguing With Socialists*
> Posted September 26th, 2009 by TrustOnlyMulder and filed in Beckbytes, Business, Glenn Beck, Quotalicious
> 
> From Glenn Beck’s new book Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Governmentcomes this gem on how capitalism performs when compared to socialistic government programs.
> ...


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## KingKikapu (26 Sep 2009)

How does one go about integrating the United States and Canada when the US is primarily a service-based economy and Canada is primarily a resource-based economy.  Does no one else see a problem with that?


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## Edward Campbell (26 Sep 2009)

KingKikapu said:
			
		

> How does one go about integrating the United States and Canada when the US is primarily a service-based economy and Canada is primarily a resource-based economy.  Does no one else see a problem with that?



_Integration_, need not, probably *should* not include a currency union - which is the big problem with service vs resource economies; but it can and *should* include a customs union, which is about 97.5% "there" already, and, much more difficult, in part because of tens of millions of illegals in the USA, a "mobility of labour" union, too.


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## KingKikapu (26 Sep 2009)

Alright, say we harmonise our customs procedures with the US.  How will that make Canada any more relevant than it already is on the economic world stage?  I fear our problem is that we already are a one pony show: we supply the Americans and that's about it.  With American influence waning with the rise of the so many large developing nations, what can we do to ensure our continued relevance in *world *economic terms (to which I say we never really had much relevance to begin with).

Thoughts?


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## Edward Campbell (26 Sep 2009)

America is still a very large, very rich, very _familiar_ and very close market that is, for the near and mid terms, *vital* to our economic success. We need to exploit it even better than we do now. America is, indeed, in *relative decline* and we need to gain better and better access to the *growing* markets but, while they are large, they are not, yet, anywhere near as rich as America, they are not _familiar_ and they are far away.

America matters; it will matter, to us, for  a generation or two, or more, to come.


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## KingKikapu (26 Sep 2009)

I completely agree: the US is - and will continue to be - an economic juggernaut for some time.  Our future is clearly linked to theirs.  


I was just reminiscing of my international business courses and how all of the professors called Canada's International Business strategy a farce.  We do business with the US and that's about it.  Putting all of our eggs into one big, mean, demanding basket marginalises our economic clout.

And yet we're screwed without them.


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## Edward Campbell (27 Sep 2009)

That professor, to whom KingKikapu refers, was right, in a way. Our _”international business strategy”_ implies some sort of coordinated, collective activity – by business *groups* and government agencies – and that is, indeed, a bit farcical.

Essentially, of course, (he says, preaching to the choir) _business_ is a highly individualistic activity – company owner/manager _"A"_ makes a rational decision about how to make money. Rationally he looks for a close, _familiar_ (in the sense that the rules and laws and customs are much like ours, here), friendly market – just what almost all Canadian businessmen find in the USA. The _rational_ choice, most often, for most Canadian businessmen is: “Sell American!”

Now, _strategically_, a word which carries a longer term implication, we, Canadians, should hope that we have a more diverse marketplace so that (cyclical) downturns in one market will not cause huge problems because they will be offset by (equally cyclical) upturns (increased demand) in others. In my, limited, experience, _strategic_ thinking comes with size. Big companies, with real Boards of Directors and so on, are more likely to think and plan _strategically_ than are small ones. But, sometimes, even companies that do think strategically will, sensibly, arrive at the conclusion that there is little of interest beyond the USA. That’s because, especially over the past 70 years, we – Americans and Canadians – have, consciously and unconsciously, built an _integrated_ *continental* market and many businesses are locked into it – Americans supplying components to Canadians who incorporate them into sub-assemblies that get shipped back to the USA where they are added to assemblies that are shipped back to Canada before to become finished products that are sold in both countries and, indeed, in Mexico and beyond.

But, strategically, we should have a coherent – another word with a “long term” implication – strategy to develop a broader market base, one that makes good business/economic sense, something that Trudeau’s “third way” in the seventies did not. Mulroney and Chrétien, in fits and starts, with more heat than light, attempted to point the way towards Asia but, in my opinion there was too much _hoopla_ and too little _strategy_ in their approaches, especially in Chrétien’s “Team Canada” exercises that, I think had too little follow through by government and business groups.

We should have a strategy and the right strategic direction is West – towards Asia, where most of the world’s peoples live and where growth (and concomitant demand for resources, which we have, and technological innovation, which we can make) will, of necessity, be, mostly, strong for a long, long time.

But a “national strategy” is nothing more than one of those early renaissance, idealistic maps, based on some exploration, lots of rumours and a fair bit of hope and conjecture. It only “works” when the _tacticians_, the individual business men who must make rational decisions for themselves and their shareholders, decide to follow it because their self-interest says it’s the better way to go.


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## Kirkhill (27 Sep 2009)

> We should have a strategy and the right strategic direction is West – towards Asia, where most of the world’s peoples live and where growth (and concomitant demand for resources, which we have, and technological innovation, which we can make) will, of necessity, be, mostly, strong for a long, long time.



Here I can agree wholeheartedly, despite caveats I have raised about allowing foreign investment in Canada.  While it might be cheaper, and thus more profitable, to have the customer (China predominantly) show up in your backyard with his pickup to cart off your spare gravel it is more secure to deliver the gravel to the customer in your pick up. Not only does it keep the customer at arms length from you and yours it also prevents the customer from acquiring legal rights that come with regularly being allowed access to your property.

By all means sell to China - but if we are going to do that buy a pickup (pipeline, port, tanker AND Navy) and deliver Canadian goods to the Customer in our own bottoms.  Consider it the Nationalist version of "owning the means of production".  The owner realizes the benefits - but only if he or she is willing to take the risks.


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## Brad Sallows (27 Sep 2009)

>We should have a strategy

Who is "we"?  Neither a socialist (government ownership) nor fascist (government collusion with private interests) model is economically desirable.  Either ultimately leads to organizations "too big to be allowed to fail", which results in vast inefficiencies and inequities.


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## Kirkhill (27 Sep 2009)

Hi Brad,

While I agree with your reluctance to build "too big to fail" institutions, either "national" or "private", I do think there is a role for our national government to create the environment to allow individual Canadians to make decisions that, in turn will allow them to prosper.

We generally accept that Infrastructure is a governmental responsibility.  That is where I accept the need for a "Strategy".

No, I would not have the government invest directly in an oil pipeline.  But I would have the government reduce taxes to encourage the development of a pipeline.  I would have the government reduce taxes to encourage the development of a local ship design, maintenance and registration capability (note I do not, necessarily include manufacture which I continue to believe is outside of our ability to deliver cost competitively). I would have the government support the construction of a shipping terminus for our goods.  I would also have the government support the provision of a "Constabulary Navy" capable of "Policing" OUR highways on the Pacific Ocean.

The last part is crucial.  Just because other people are policing those shipping lanes just now doesn't mean that we can afford to take a free ride on them.  If we aren't participating in the policing then we don't get to write the rules as to how and when they should be policed and can ultimately find ourselves barred from using the highway by those that are doing the policing.  To prevent that occuring we need a pretty big "Policeman" of our own capable of facing down the "Other Guy's" Policeman.


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## Edward Campbell (27 Sep 2009)

A _strategy_ for trade and commerce, involves two key players:

1. Governments that use tariffs and subsidies to _encourage_ trade in one/some direction(s) and to discourage it in others and provide trade officials in selected countries to help Canadians find, secure hold markets there; and

2. Trade association that organize e.g. _Team Canada_ missions and provide information and encouragement to the individual members of their specialist groups (manufacturers, resource industries, services, etc).


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## Brad Sallows (27 Sep 2009)

Tariffs and subsidies have been, and therefore will be, gamed by established players and negotiable politicians to hinder economic growth.

The first element of a useful strategy is to ensure there can be no gatekeepers with the political power to close the gate behind them.


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## Kirkhill (27 Sep 2009)

I don't foresee the day that we will ever be able to guarantee that following governments won't reverse the decisions of their predecessors.  In fact I am not sure that I want to see that day: partly because of the vagaries of everything and partly because it is part of the democratic process that allows people to redirect their governments..... unless I misconstrue your point Brad.

With respect to the strategy issue - Is it really necessary for governments to supply trade officials?  How about just supplying letters patent or royal warrants to the privateers and let them have at it?  That produced Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong and York Factory.

What value are government officials if the government being represented doesn't have the local clout, either through lack of resources or lack of will, to influence events?

While I like the notion of Trade Associations the ideal, to my mind, is not Team Canada missions but rather EFTA, the European Free Trade Association.  That association brought the discipline of like-minded neighbours to the internal trade as opposed to the imposed regimes favoured by the UN and the EU.  Team Canada, does not, to my mind suggest a Trade Association so much as a Trade Expedition having more in common with Radishes and Gooseberries expeditions to Hudson's Bay.


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## a_majoor (28 Sep 2009)

The problem "might" be self correcting given the power of the market.

The United States has great attraction to most Canadian business for the reasons that have been outlined earlier, but new centers of gravity are emerging (China and India) while the old center is undergoing a period of turbulance and relative decline. These sorts of conditions will draw the smartest and most energetic business people's attention.

As well, the notion that "culture" plays a large part in investment and business decisions will also have a role here. Canada has received a huge inflow of people from China and the Indian sub continent, who are quite comfortabvle and familier with the customs of their homelands. Those who are going into business will see a large, familier marketplace and be drawn towards it.

WRT government's role, Brad is basically saying that more State intervention will simply make the process less efficient, by directly reducing the resources and capital available (high taxes and regulations), and by injecting political rent seekers into the process, so businessperson "A" will be disadvantaged compared to businessperson "B" who is friendly with the dominant political party or bureaucrats, whatever the intrinsic merits of their business.


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## Edward Campbell (28 Sep 2009)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> ...
> As well, the notion that "culture" plays a large part in investment and business decisions will also have a role here. Canada has received a huge inflow of people from China and the Indian sub continent, who are quite comfortabvle and familier with the customs of their homelands. Those who are going into business will see a large, familier marketplace and be drawn towards it.
> ...



Bingo! We are, already, seeing this. The USA has attracted more (proportionately) of China and India's brightest entrepreneurs, but "ours" are already moving to sell their Canadian products into their parents' markets.




			
				Thucydides said:
			
		

> ...
> WRT government's role, Brad is basically saying that more State intervention will simply make the process less efficient, by directly reducing the resources and capital available (high taxes and regulations), and by injecting political rent seekers into the process, so businessperson "A" will be disadvantaged compared to businessperson "B" who is friendly with the dominant political party or bureaucrats, whatever the intrinsic merits of their business.




Ah! Seen and agreed.


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## KingKikapu (28 Sep 2009)

And yet Ontario's premier has already urged the Conservative Government to institute quid pro quo 'Buy Canadian' legislation in retaliation for the American protectionist moves.  Of course Harper would never do such a thing, but a province so dependent on manufacturing goods for the US was bound to push for something that uniquely benefits a small subset of their workforce over the greater good of the economy.

Regionally elected individuals will always have to cater to the wants of regionally motivated individuals.


----------



## a_majoor (28 Sep 2009)

I would so love the Prime Minister to say:

"Suck it up. They Buy American, _we_ sell to the world"


----------



## Edward Campbell (28 Sep 2009)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> I would so love the Prime Minister to say:
> 
> "Suck it up. They Buy American, _we_ sell to the world"




He will because he doesn't have much choice. We are, already, part of a nearly completely _integrated_ economy - especially as it applies to manufacturing. We do not make everything most much of what we need. "Buy Canadian" is a pipe-dream.

The Americans are more self sufficient but there will be plenty of stuff procured from Canada because the US no longer makes it or no longer makes enough of it.


----------



## a_majoor (28 Sep 2009)

Somewhere in the depths of Army.ca there is a more complete discussion on how New Zealand "privatized" their public service. Yet another example of how things "could" be done.

http://www.officiallyscrewed.com/blog/?p=1266



> *Beckbytes – Arguing With Idiots About Capitalism II*
> 
> Posted September 27th, 2009 by TrustOnlyMulder and filed in Beckbytes, Business, Glenn Beck, Numbers Don't Lie, Politics-International, Quotalicious
> From Glenn Beck’s new book Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Governmentcomes this clip about privatization corporatization.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (4 Oct 2009)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Ottawa Citizen_, is an interesting, perhaps even disturbing to some, article:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/China+effect+stuns+education+researchers/2064456/story.html


> China effect stuns education researchers
> *88.3% of young Chinese immigrants go to university, study finds*
> 
> By Joanne Laucius, The Ottawa Citizen
> ...




_“Many immigrants come here for the kids. The kids understand that and they work for it,"_ says Arthur Sweetnam and the reason is here. Confucianism is not a religion, despite the number of temples and the number of “prayers’ said at them. It is even more powerful, it is a _socio-*cultural* custom_, a way of life. At the very root of Confucian thought is filial responsibility. These young Chinese kids are not working so hard and so well just to get rich. They “owe” their parents and the currency in which the debt is repaid is not, wholly, financial – “esteem” and “success” matter.

But all of the work Finnie and Mueller did point to one fact: “our” kids, the children on non-immigrant families, are *failing*. But they are a HUGE majority so they cannot afford to fail we cannot afford that sort of failure. Six or seven percent of the population – which is what East and South Asians represent – cannot “save” the country.

Going back to Brian Lee Crowley’s thesis we can see that we have, indeed, “lost” something that was embedded in our *culture*, but Crowley doesn’t satisfactorily explain why native born Americans are, pretty much, in the same boat as native born Canadians. Not all the blame can be laid at Trudeau’s feet. It is true, I think, that Pearson and Trudeau created a whole category of useless, wasteful, publicly funded "pseudo-jobs" and these _pseudo-jobs_ did go a long way towards corrupting _”the work ethic for which Canadians had, in earlier years, been famous.”_ But it would not have happened, not even to “save” Québec, if the same sort of thing had not, already, started in the USA. We have many stupid, wasteful, totally useless municipal, provincial and national government departments and agencies but our American friends have at least as many, likely (proportionately) more and that was not the 19th century expansion of government about which Leacok complained. It (the US and Canadian “models”) were post-war *intrusions* by the state into the everyday _business_ of the nation but the instructions were not just tolerated: they were welcomed, even demanded.

The cause, however, is not overly important. The effect is that we are starting to rely upon immigrants to *lead* the country. Go to any major university campus; look around; look, especially, in the graduate and business schools. You will see that more than 15%, more, usually, than 25% of the faces are East and South Asian. Look at the business pages of any major daily – there are, regularly – pages of pictures of MBA graduates, newly minted chartered accountants and the like. East and South Asians make up six or seven percent of the population but they provide two or three or more times their “fair” share of scientists, physicians, engineers,  and accountants; they provide far, far below their “fair” share of truck drivers, labourers, retail sales people, nursery school teachers and so on. Look at any municipal works crew leaning on their shovels repairing the streets – East and Soth Asians make up six or seven percent of the population but you don’t see them taking six or seven percent of the low wage, semi-skilled jobs.

The problem is NOT with the East and South Asians. It is with the _traditional_, white/European stock, Canadians. The problem is *cultural*: “theirs” has adapted to the 21st century and it breeds success; “ours,” well, not so much.

Governments can do only so much harm. Finally "we" must either sink or save ourselves.

"We" includes 100% of the population, including the six or seven percent that is "doing its bit."


----------



## a_majoor (5 Oct 2009)

Cultural change does not come overnight, much of the damage was done by the "Progressive" movement starting in the early part of the last century. The mythology surrounding the "New Deal" and the role of government in the great Depression and the real role that expanded government played in winning WWII and WWIII (AKA the Cold War) also explains how big government managed to keep its luster for so long.

Literally generations of North Americans have lived and worked in this environment, and are quite comfortable with "entitlements", since expanding populations have concealed the Ponzi scheme nature of "entitlement" spending for generations as well.

Culture shift is coming, however, since the conditions are no longer sustainable (most US entitlement programs will become technically insolvent before 2020, and many cities and states already are facing a crisis of unfunded public service union pensions as well). Given these will trigger a *real* crisis, the big problem for Western culture will be fending off or dealing with "the man on the white horse"


----------



## Edward Campbell (7 Oct 2009)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, is more on why our accomplishments are failing to match our potential:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/an-economy-handcuffed-by-government/article1314811/


> An economy handcuffed by government
> *In the first half of the 20th century, Canada was poised to become the richest country in the world*
> 
> Neil Reynolds
> ...




While I doubt that Canada was ever _“well on its way to becoming the richest country in the world,”_ it was not, prior to 1967, on its way to being an economic weakling, either. We, Canadians, have two overarching _common, national_ characteristics: *greed* and *envy*.

We all want something for nothing, nothing strange about that but we have developed a wholly unfounded faith in the ability of *governments* to give it to us – presumably by _robbing Peter to pay Paul_, which is the only thing governments can do.

When we want something for nothing it is, generally, whatever our American neighbours have – with one exception: we do not *envy* their work ethic and risk taking nature. We don’t want that, and, once again, we look to government to “feed” our envious desires without requiring us to make any effort.

That *culture of entitlement*, which is Trudeau’s main _legacy_, is what is most “wrong” with Canada.


----------



## Kirkhill (8 Oct 2009)

As much as I enjoy beating up on Trudeau as much as the next guy it would appear that Canada is not unique in this regard.

From the Daily Mail:



> Benefits 'wrecked the British work ethic,' new study claims
> 
> ........The work ethic that inspired successive generations has ebbed away in the face of the welfare state.
> Over the past decades each generation has seen more and more people milking the benefit system, which has sapped their will to work, the research from the Centre for Economic Performance said.......
> ...



Yup Trudeau was a disaster for Canada but just as he had been in childhood so he was as an adult.  Far from being a unique Canadian phenome - he was a glib, charismatic, unoriginal follower capable of parroting effectively the line of the day to the believers.  He started with parroting the Pius line.   He finished with the LSE, or Harold Lasky line.  That was the common line that connected Trudeau, the Carter Democrats and the majority of the Socialist community in Europe and India.


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## Edward Campbell (8 Oct 2009)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> As much as I enjoy beating up on Trudeau as much as the next guy it would appear that Canada is not unique in this regard.
> 
> From the Daily Mail:
> 
> Yup Trudeau was a disaster for Canada but just as he had been in childhood so he was as an adult.  Far from being a unique Canadian phenome - he was a glib, charismatic, unoriginal follower capable of parroting effectively the line of the day to the believers.  He started with parroting the Pius line.   He finished with the LSE, or Harold Lasky line.  That was the common line that connected Trudeau, the Carter Democrats and the majority of the Socialist community in Europe and India.




Agreed, and see my earlier comment about _”Not all the blame can be laid at Trudeau’s feet ... it would not have happened, not even to “save” Québec, if the same sort of thing had not, already, started in the USA.”_

And here, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _National Post_ is a _snapshot_ of Britain in 2009 that shows that the “rot” is not confined to North America:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/10/08/barbara-kay-england-s-perished-cultural-sun.aspx


> Barbara Kay: England's perished cultural sun
> 
> October 08, 2009
> 
> ...




First: I am pretty sure it is already happening to us – no need to wait.

Second: at a GUESS:

•	The first two horrible examples of _parenting_ are _”native”_ English – from families who have been British for 1,000 years or more; but

•	The apparent need for a primer for *teachers* is a result of politically correct attitudes towards the _educational needs_ of immigrants wherein it is considered, *nonsensically*, that _self esteem_ is more important than a solid grounding in the national language; and

•	A significant portion of the chronically unemployed is made up of visible minorities. Those people are not lazy; they do not prefer welfare over work; but they do find it harder to find work – harder than is the case for white _Anglos_ of similar qualifications.


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## Kirkhill (8 Oct 2009)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Agreed, and see my earlier comment about _”Not all the blame can be laid at Trudeau’s feet ... it would not have happened, not even to “save” Québec, if the same sort of thing had not, already, started in the USA.”_



Missed that one.... a day late and a dollar short again.


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## Edward Campbell (9 Oct 2009)

The _Good Grey Globe’s_ Jeffrey Simpson’s prescription for a _renewed_ economy is higher taxes according to  this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/oh-for-another-slice-of-budgetary-prudence/article1317509/


> Oh, for another slice of budgetary prudence
> *Why do the Conservatives refuse to save for a rainy day?*
> 
> Jeffrey Simpson
> ...



The Liberals, under Jean Chrétien (with Paul Martin in Finance) were *NOT* saving for a rainy day; they were, purely and simply, overtaxing us, by hundreds of dollars each year, year after year, for every man woman and child, in order to have money for e.g. their *illegal* sponsorship programme.

Simpson’s _hatred_ for everything Conservative has rotted his brain. Too high taxes are not fiscal prudence; they are a recipe for fiscal disaster. Big governments *always fail* their constituents; big governments can exist only when they can tax too much.


----------



## a_majoor (9 Oct 2009)

What makes these stories even more irritating to me is the Minister of Finance could have taken a quite different tack:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/09/16/why-not-say-no.aspx



> *Why not say no?*
> Posted: September 16, 2009, 10:49 PM by NP Editor
> Jim Flaherty, Mark Milke, budget
> 
> ...




And of course the moonster in the closet:





> *Terence Corcoran: Canada’s $1-trillion debt baby*
> Posted: September 11, 2009, 8:53 PM by NP Editor
> Terence Corcoran, Jim Flaherty, deficits, debt
> The Tory commitment to ‘eliminate’ Canada’s total net debt by 2021 now looks absurd
> ...


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## Kirkhill (9 Oct 2009)

And big numbers become smaller.....

$30,000 / person
Amortised over 25 years at 4% results in a monthly payment of $141 and a total carrying cost over the lifetime of the loan of $12,500 or an average of about $40 a month.


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## Brad Sallows (10 Oct 2009)

Simpson reaches the right conclusion, but only by accident.

The deficit is simply the gap between revenues and expenses.  Sustainable revenue is obtained from taxes and fees.  Most taxes and fees are collected from economic transactions.  Borrowing, the other major source of revenue, is obviously unsustainable and can only be one of two things: a movement of future revenues (taxes and fees) into the present, or a deflation of the currency which makes the nominal deficit and debt proportionately smaller to the real economy and amounts to a taxation of assets and fixed incomes.  To expand direct taxation of assets (eg. one time "wealth" taxes to generate an infusion of cash) would be an interesting experiment, and probably would end in bloodshed.

Ultimately all revenues must be taxed or charged in fees, unless debt is repudiated.

In a sluggish economy, the total value of transactions falls, so revenues fall.  Concurrently - in any nation which provides social benefits - expenditures rise.  This is our current deficit situation.  The <b><u>hope</u></b> is that the economy will improve so that the net value of transactions increases and the draw down of social benefits decreases.  At some future point and without any change to nominal taxes or fees or base expenditures, the two lines may cross and the net budget will once again be in balance or surplus.  This summarizes the <b><u>strategy</u></b> of those who promise to balance the budget without any major new taxes or spending cuts.  Is <b><u>hope</u></b> a viable <b><u>strategy</u></b>?

The question is rhetorical; the answer is "no".

Simpson either misunderstands or has chosen to ignore the reasons for federal tax cuts.  Firstly, they are political gestures intended to win votes, exploited thus by Liberals and Conservatives.  But for fiscal conservatives in Canada, tax cuts are the only means to restrain federal spending growth.  Cutting revenues to match expenditures ties the hands of candidates and succeeding fiscal spendthrifts: they can't point to a surplus and promise it as largesse to voters; they have to reallocate expenditures or raise new revenues.

Governments do not often save for rainy days.  There are few Heritage Funds, and it is arguable that they are an effective repository for capital.  A surplus is overtaxation, <b><u>unless there exists an accumulated deficit (debt)</u></b>.  In the latter case, the reduction of debt principal represents the reckoning with past borrowing.  The preceding federal Liberal government managed the country's finances poorly; 1997-2007 was a "boom" decade during which we should have been paying for our past spending hand over fist.  While there is a debt to be paid there should be almost no new spending and minimal spending growth in established programs (ie. none more than necessary to account for price inflation and population growth).  This brings us to Simpson's second mistake.  The preceding Liberal government stubbornly insisted on spending surplus monies on things other than debt payment, and that additional spending was overtaxation.  The current Conservative government eliminated that overtaxation, and much of the increased Conservative spending people (such as Simpson) bark about was just the restoration of transfers to other levels of government that had been cut when falling interest rates and increasing economic activity closed the deficit gap enough to meet the Liberals' level of courage to implement spending cuts.

As I have repeatedly pointed out: <b><u>the federal Liberal party badly managed Canada's finances during the Trudeau era (overspending), and badly managed Canada's finances during the Chretien/Martin era (underpayment of debt).  Those who intend to vote Liberal need to find a reason other than the myth that Liberals are effective fiscal managers.</u></b>

Getting back to the current problem, the flaw is the assumption that economic activity will quickly rise to prior levels.  The '97-'07 decade was an exceptional, not usual, period.  <b><u>It is a grave and possibly unrecoverable error to calibrate spending to match peak revenues.</u></b>  Government spending in most jurisdictions grew to meet the flush revenues of that period; the state of California demonstrates perhaps the most egregious example in North America.

The Keynesian prescription is basically that the effects of a recession should be lessened by pulling the "hump" of future surplus into the "dip" of current deficit to smooth the path.  But it can only work for a short time.  Many people of all political persuasions agreed that consumer spending could not indefinitely be leveraged on credit cards and assets (eg. property values).  The day of reckoning arrived last year.  The reaction by governments, and particularly by progressives, amounted to this: "Yes, we think people should spend less...but not yet!".  So they embarked on "stimulus" programs.  But if people are determined to cut their personal debt, and are furthermore determined to manage their finances conservatively to mitigate what they believe is a coming fiscal storm due to profligate government spending, <b><u>the economic activity the spenders are counting on will not resume within the time span it must</u></b>.

<b><u>It is prudent to begin cutting government spending at all levels immediately.</u></b>


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## Edward Campbell (12 Oct 2009)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from a recent edition of the _Globe and Mail_ is more on Chinese students studying in Canadian universities and, perhaps, staying on or becoming residents or _sea turtles_ – who return to China, or _seagulls_ – who go back and forth:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canadian-universities-falling-behind-in-drawing-students-from-china/article1313302/


> Canadian universities falling behind in drawing students from China
> 
> CAROLYNNE WHEELER
> 
> ...



There is a perception that the _sea turtles_ are a net loss to Canada but that is not true. My own observation lead me to conclude that Chinese people who were educated in Canada retain considerable knowledge of and respect for Canada and, when the opportunity arises, will favour Canadian policy or business.


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## Larkvall (12 Oct 2009)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> <b><u>It is prudent to begin cutting government spending at all levels immediately.</u></b>



Amen to that. 

I also believe it is a myth though that the Conservatives care about fiscal responsibility.


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## Kirkhill (12 Oct 2009)

Larkvall said:
			
		

> Amen to that.
> 
> I also believe it is a myth though that the Conservatives care about fiscal responsibility.



I agree with Brad in principle but, as has been noted by others previously, I believe that our current PM has made the political calculation that the general population find it more acceptable to wake up one morning and discover that the well is dry rather than be told that their going to be rationed because the well is going dry.  Harper's plan seem to be to speed up the rate of baling so that the well dries up faster allowing him to deal with the crisis during a Conservative administration.   

And, if it happens soon he can turn around and say that Jack, Gilles and Iffy forced him to continue with Liberal SOPs long after they should have been retired.


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## Edward Campbell (12 Oct 2009)

Larkvall said:
			
		

> ...
> I also believe it is a myth though that the Conservatives care about fiscal responsibility.




It is a minority government and it’s working the way minorities do: by pandering.

At some point, during the _recovery_, the governments, most governments, will have to face the *fact* that deficit spending cannot be sustained for very long. Budgets *must be balanced* and, after too long periods of deficit financing, put into *surplus* so that the _collective_ debts (municipal, provincial and federal) can be reduced – so that interest payments on those debts can be reduced to manageable levels.

When the realization hits that we cannot _just_ grow our way out of deficit then we will have to face two options:

1.	Increase revenue: higher taxes; or

2.	Decrease spending: lower _programme_ spending.

Successive governments have experimented with _efficiency_ – which can produce very small, almost imperceptible, spending decreases and better performance (output), and downloading – which masks rather than solves the problem.

Look at this list of hundreds and hundreds of *federal* government departments and agencies. Rest assured that someone believes that each and every one *must exist* because it does something useful – *for* Canada and Canadians or, for the party in power.

For example, in the FAQs section, the Natiuonal Seniors Council says of itself:



> *Q1. Why is a National Seniors Council necessary?
> A1.* Seniors are the fastest growing group in the population in Canada. By 2031 the number of seniors will almost double to nine million people, representing close to one quarter of Canada's population.
> 
> Canada's New Government recognizes that people 65 and older have diverse needs and expectations. They are a valuable resource, offering their experience and wisdom to Canadian society.
> ...



I don’t know how much the National Seniors Council costs. I’m fairly certain each member is paid, at least, a _per diem_ for meetings and that all travel expenses are paid. I know they travel a lot. I’m a senior and I *do not need* a _National Seniors Council_ and neither, I dare to say, does anyone expect the few lucky seniors who augment their incomes by serving on it.

Cuts, big cuts that will save millions and millions and, with ease, billions and billions and tens of billions, are obviously necessary and some are obvious – as soon as we have a majority government.


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## GAP (12 Oct 2009)

Oh, without a doubt cutbacks and tax increases are coming, but I also think that the Conservatives are hoping that the economy will bounce back like it did in the mid 90's with the Liberals and they can then utilize all that cash that came rolling in....

what they are forgetting is that the Liberals had off loaded everything they could to the provinces and hiked taxes whenever/however they could (anyone remember the 5 Cent surtax on fuel that's never gone away?) This allowed them to literally roll in cash surpluses until the Conservatives got in....


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## Larkvall (12 Oct 2009)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> It is a minority government and it’s working the way minorities do: by pandering.



Yes, but look at the Mulroney years. Two terms and they were still overspending hand over fist. I just don't have any faith in any of them.


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## Edward Campbell (12 Oct 2009)

Larkvall said:
			
		

> Yes, but look at the Mulroney years. Two terms and they were still overspending hand over fist. I just don't have any faith in any of them.




And your point is very well taken.

In fairness Mulroney/Wilson *did balance* the *programme* budget; that is to say that the government of the day spent less on programmes than it received in taxes, etc. But he was afraid, especially after his run in with Solange Denis, to make the sorts of programme cuts that are *essential* if one wants to have a sound, sensible fiscal regime. Chrétien/Martin were equally afraid and that's why they made (relatively) minor cuts to programmes other than defence and *downloaded* expenses instead.


----------



## Kirkhill (12 Oct 2009)

Larkvall said:
			
		

> Yes, but look at the Mulroney years. Two terms and they were still overspending hand over fist. I just don't have any faith in any of them.



In addition to Edward's point I think it is important to recognize the influence of the "personal" on the "institutional".  Institutions, like the Liberal and Conservative parties, elect/select their leaders based on the memberships belief that the nominee is one of them.  But nobody ever shares 100% of everybodies views.  

Once elected/selected the leader acts according to their individual or personal views.  If they are an effective leader then they bend the institution to their personal philosophy (Trudeau, Klein).  If they are ineffectual then they get dumped by the institution (Day) or they break the institution (Ignatieff?).

Harper is leading HIS Conservatives down a different trail than Mulroney led HIS Conservatives.  And the Conservatives that Mulroney started leading were not the same Conservatives that he handed over to Kim Campbell.   Nor are Stephen Harper's Conservatives the same as those that Kim Campbell briefly led.

I support the current incarnation of the Conservatives, and generally speaking, I find myself more in agreement with the historical tendencies of the Conservatives than the historical tendencies of the Liberals, Socialists, Social Democrats, Communists and others that believe if a little government is good then a lot of government must be great.  That doesn't mean, at times, that I don't find myself more in tune with the direction a particular Liberal leader might be taking that party than the regnant Conservative leader is taking them.

And politics is the art of the possible, and everything is political.  Everything is always a compromise with the optimum solution generally being "the least worst".


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## Edward Campbell (13 Oct 2009)

Further to immigrants and education: this report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, amplifies the work done by Finnie, Mueller and Sweetnam:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/if-youre-a-new-canadian-you-go-to-university/article1321201/


> If you're a new Canadian, 'you go to university'
> *Variety of social factors cause first- and second-generation Canadians to attend university far in excess of non-immigrant children*
> 
> Elizabeth Church
> ...




For those who want more details, the Statistics Canada Youth in Transition programme has a web page.

What the data shows is that “first generation” Chinese immigrants, which include children born in Canada and China of parents who immigrated to Canada, are 2.34 times more likely to attend university than are the children of non-immigrant (third generation or beyond) Canadians. For first generation _Anglosphere_ and Western and Northern European  children the ratios are 1.2 : 1 – pretty much the same. I think there *might* be a _refugee effect_, too – in other words children of refugees *might* have different ‘motivations’ than do the children of immigrants and that might explain some of the changes between the first and second generations.

(I have a problem with some of the statistical groupings. I would, for example, have preferred to have seen “Southern Asia and the Middle East” broken into more parts. The problems for _StatsCan_ include too long tables and politics – there *are* political pressures to present data in certain ways and senior statisticians _bend_ to political will as do all senior officials.)
  
Part of the surprising Chinese results – which go, as Prof. Finnie notes _”beyond all we can measure,”_ and which _”may be about the desire to go and getting that desire in a person early enough so that they are prepared to go”_ – do have deep *cultural* roots which I have described elsewhere. _Filial responsibility_ is a HUGELY powerful social force that is not unique to Confucianism but may be most _advanced_ in those societies.

For us: the *real* problem is not our relatively low university rate it is our *explicit reliance* upon immigrants to fuel our economy. That, in and of itself, is not a problem either; the problem is: *how to we “source” our immigration?*

Clearly, to me, we ought to _accentuate the positive_ which means sourcing more and more immigrants from China and India – both of which have *surpluses* of educated, entrepreneurial, ambitious and _Confucian_ peoples who want to emigrate in order to prosper in a new, different society.


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## Edward Campbell (18 Oct 2009)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_ is an important column/book review by Neil Reynolds:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/canadas-downward-path-from-nation-to-fiction/article1280143/
> 
> ...




I’m almost through a first reading of _Fearful Symmetry_ and, broadly, I agree with Lawrence Martin’s review which is reproduced here under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from yesterday’s _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/review-fearful-symmetry-the-fall-and-rise-of-canadas-founding-values-by-brian-lee-crowley/article1326434/


> *From Saturday's Books section*
> Canada, Quebec and the nanny state
> *Fear of separation and the constant demands of baby boomers have transformed Canada in unwelcome ways, says Brian Lee Crowley*
> 
> ...



My two important points of agreement with Martin are:

1.	 Crowley _” has developed a credible and somewhat original take on Canada's latter-day evolution that is cogent and, in good part, persuasive.”_ Crowley’s central argument is, in my opinion sound and soundly *proved*; but

2.	_”His sense that the decline of the influence of Quebec and the big drop-off in job seekers owing to baby-boomer retirements will see Canada revert to a pre-1960s culture seems extravagantly wishful.”_

Québec’s influence in and on Canada is declining and the rate of decline can only increase and that can only be a good thing. But the _culture of entitlement_ or what Crowley calls the _society of takers_ (rather than the _society of makers_) is not restricted to Québec; it is well entrenched throughout the country and demographics alone will not solve the problem.

The “battle” - a battle "we" must win if we want Canada to be "relevant" again - must be fought *for* “New Canada” – geographically, everything West of the Ottawa River, which is sophisticated, multi-cultural/worldly, entrepreneurial, well better educated (than “Old Canada”), willing to work and, broadly, *liberal* in its socio economic outlook. (The word *liberal* implies a belief in fundamental individual rights, including a *fundamental right* to private property and a suspicion of _collectives_ (big business, big labour, big religion, bit government) and _collective_ rights. It will take some, but not too much, political courage to wage the battle for “new Canada” but that courage should be easy enough to find in politicians who are basically numerate because the data is pretty convincing.

But there is a risk. The battle for “New Canada” may be fought by others, too. The very people – the only resource that really matters – who make “new Canada” worthwhile are also being actively sought by e.g. the USA. It would not take much to convince Canada to enter into a customs and immigration union with the USA. We are about 97.5% there in terms of the customs union and the _immigration union_, essentially the free flow of people across the border would be welcomed by many Canadians even though there would, finally, be that “great sucking sound” of our most valuable people being drawn into the “better” American market – where those people can do “better’ for themselves and their children.

More about this later and elsewhere.


----------



## Edward Campbell (18 Oct 2009)

This report, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from yesterday’s _Globe and Mail_, is about the tensions between Québec and “New Canada:”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-sets-off-constitutional-battle-over-regulator/article1327137/


> Ottawa sets off constitutional battle over regulator
> *In move that could enrage Quebec, Harper government asks Supreme Court whether it can impose national financial regime*
> 
> Steven Chase and Rhéal Séguin
> ...




Alberta’s objections to a national securities regulator are, if I understand them, based on two concerns:

1.	A constitutional concern related to just what constitutes “regulating trade and commerce” vs. “regulating industry,” which are the bits from §91/92 of our Constitution that are in question; and

2.	A wholly practical concern re: promoting the petroleum industry. 

My guess is that neither is well founded and that the “real” reason for the opposition lies with a desire, amongst a few Albertans, to actually build Stephen Harper’s firewall.

Now, on principle, I look for an even more _decentralized_ Canadian federation – even though we are, already, amongst the most *effectively* decentralized one in the world (see Ronald L Watts, _Comparing Federal System_, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999) – because I believe every province, not just Alberta and Québec should have a similar “firewall” thus _confining_ the national government to a few function that it can do well, including national securities regulation.

If the legal experts are right then we will have a national securities regulator and Québec (and Alberta) will be allowed to opt out but opting out will not make economic/business sense and Alberta will “opt in” after ensuring that the regulations for resource industry securities meet their needs. Québec may have to opt out, it may be politically impossible to do the economically sensible thing – but it will demand compensation for the inevitable economic damage it will inflict upon itself. Canada will, likely, pay because we have grown accustomed to paying Québec to shoot itself in the foot.


----------



## Rifleman62 (18 Oct 2009)

Quebec, Quebec, Quebec.


----------



## Edward Campbell (19 Oct 2009)

Here, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, is a classic example of why Canada never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity (as Abba Eban famously said of the Palestinians):

http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20091018.escenic_1328568/BNStory/International


> EU trade talks stuck on butter
> 
> DOUG SAUNDERS
> 
> ...




The dairy farmers, especially those from Québec, are known to be well organized and they have and are not afraid to use political power and even, occasionally, violent protest to protect their “supply management” from any trade deals: inter-provincial or international.

No one should blame them for wanting to protect the good deal they have – the reason we, all Canadians, pay far too much for milk, butter and eggs – but we must ask if protecting a few harms the many.


----------



## Rifleman62 (19 Oct 2009)

Canadian Wheat Board - only farmers in western Canada are regulated.

The new Canadian Dairy Board - only farmers in eastern Canada are regulated. See how they like that. Additionally have a bunch of western MP's demanding the establishment of the Board.

Compare the price of dairy/eggs/pork to the USA. A huge difference.


----------



## a_majoor (19 Oct 2009)

A veiw of Canada by a former resident (from the comments page of a blog post). Note the great differentials in prices, which reduces our standard of living directly, and also by reducing the amount available to save and invest...

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-and-harper-a-tale-of-two-leaders/



> 10. Andrew:
> 
> I’m an American who, until late 2008, spent 7 of the preceding 11 years in Canada (Calgary and Ottawa.) I used to tell our friends that I wished Harper was the U.S. President, so vastly preferable to Bush and Obama was he.
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (26 Oct 2009)

One, but only one, of the many obstacles to improving our productivity - and, consequentially, making Canada economically relevant again - is the inter-provincial trade barriers that, effectively, render us less efficient and, therefore, less productive (and less prosperous) than our American neighbours. Failing to remove existing and totally unnecessary trade barriers is bad enough but trying to erect new ones is terrible.

This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s CBC web site, will be bad news, indeed, if it is allowed to happen:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2009/10/26/nb-power-strategy.html


> Hydro-Québec seeks control of N.B. corridor to U.S.: experts
> Monday, October 26, 2009
> 
> CBC News
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (9 Nov 2009)

I was sure we discussed this topic a week or so ago but I cannot find it.

Here is a report, a week plus old, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-can-meet-climate-goals-but-the-west-will-pay/article1342887/


> Canada can meet its climate goals, but the West will write the cheques
> *Report reveals costs of taking action, now Canadians have to decide*
> 
> Shawn McCarthy
> ...




The report was, essentially, rejected by Environment Minister Jim Prentice and it was not exactly embraced by the Liberals.

But here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, is some background on the report:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/red-cloud-over-alberta/article1354846/


> Red cloud over Alberta
> *On the environment, Quebec is content to play the holier-than-thou role*
> 
> Lysiane Gagnon
> ...




This goes back to my point about _Torontonians_ and their ‘blinkered’ view. Ed Clark is one of them.

On the bigger issue: we, *nationally* cannot afford a _beggar they neighbour_ policy in order to pacify _*taker* Canada_, as Brian Lee Crowley describes Québec and Atlantic Canada (in contrast to _*maker* Canada_ which Crowley says lies West of the Ottawa River).


----------



## a_majoor (2 Dec 2009)

Canada and our oil:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjMwNWRlMmFkZjQyZjRlOWY3MjQ2Y2YwODkyNTQ2NGM=



> *Canada: Rogue State   [Jonah Goldberg]*
> 
> 
> According to the EUrocracy, the world would be better, heck the world would be great, if only we were more like our little brother to the North, Canada. They're nice, deferential to the U.N. and Europe, and they have exactly the right attitudes on everything from diversity to the backwardness of the US of A (a "Northern Puerto Rico with an EU sensibility" was how I described it in one article). And yet, it appears that Canada, not America, is the greatest threat to a Copenhagen accord on global warming. Why? Because they want to exploit their enormous (and particularly filthy in parts) oil reserves.
> ...


----------



## RangerRay (2 Dec 2009)

I just started reading _Fearful Symmetry_...very good read.


----------



## a_majoor (23 Dec 2009)

This might also be a good article for the Election 2012 thread, you just know that if the Minister were to try to impliment these cuts the shrieks of outrage would echo off the Rockies (and then Jack and Mike would explain how _they_ would end the deficit and reduce the debt without cutting programs or raising taxes... :)

What is really to be determined is the absolute and relative size of these proposed cuts, the economic fallout (would there be tax cuts to go with these savings?) and the political will to carry through? The suggestion we still need stimulus spending is ominous...

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/742220--flaherty-s-deficit-plan-take-an-axe-and-cut-deep



> *Flaherty's deficit plan: Take an axe and cut deep*
> 
> December 23, 2009
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (10 Jan 2010)

Here is an idea which will have far more traction than any amount of stimulous spending, and is as applicable here in Canada as anywhere else. We don't even need to insist of using tax dollars, simplifying the tax code could free up about 3-6 billion dollars in compliance costs and tax preparation fees:

http://pajamasmedia.com/edgelings/state-of-the-union/



> *State of the Union*
> Posted By edgelings On January 9, 2010 @ 1:56 am In Business, Venture | 29 Comments
> 
> STATE OF THE UNION By Michael S. Malone
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (15 Jan 2010)

Comparing the United States to Europe is interesting, especialy since Canada follows the European models of socialism and State intervention:

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2010/01/the_difference_between_the_us.php



> *The Difference Between the US and Europe*
> 14 Jan 2010 05:48 pm
> 
> When Paul Krugman said "Europe's economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe -- official economic statistics or your own lying eyes -- the eyes have it." I had roughly the same reaction that Matt Welch did:  having lived in London for intermittent (short) periods, I found it noticeably poorer than the United States.
> ...



The New York Times ought to get an economist on its oped page now and then to offer _informed_ opinions on these matters.


----------



## a_majoor (22 Jan 2010)

Another international success story we can learn from:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/free-market-reform-admits-chile-to-the-club/article1439934/



> *Free-market reform admits Chile to the club *
> 
> A tip of the hat to the legendary Chicago boys, who overhauled Chile's statist economy
> Neil Reynolds
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (24 Jan 2010)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ web site (tomorrow’s print edition), is a useful story about healthcare spending:

(my *emphasis* added)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/surging-cost-of-health-care-poised-to-play-a-role-in-harpers-spring-budget/article1442449/


> Surging cost of health care poised to play a role in Harper's spring budget
> *As the Conservatives look to bring down the deficit, Health-care costs – forecast to hit 11.9 per cent of GDP – are a prime target*
> 
> Bill Curry
> ...




A sound, effective and efficient (cost effective) universal heath care system makes a positive contribution to a nation’s *productivity* but Canada’s system is neither effective nor efficient. We pay a far higher percentage of GDP on health care than do many other advanced nations (e.g. France and Sweden) and we have worse _outcomes_ than most of the countries that spend less than we do. Our system is, clearly, a drag on our already weak productivity.

Health care costs eat away at *much more important* spending such as education and R&D which are much, much more important to productivity and prosperity. A ‘better’ health care system needs much more money but, without major, *unproductive* tax increases our Canadian system can only get worse – see e.g. here where funding cuts, necessitated by increases in health care costs that are, simply, unaffordable, translate into the preventable deaths of our children. The necessary ‘more’ money cannot come from taxpayers; therefore it must come from the private sector – or Canadians will get poorer and sicker, at the same time, because too many are too stupid to cast aside the Liberal mythology that our system is any good at all.

But, never forget Solange Denis and the fear that she, and people like her, strike in the hearts of retail politicians – and that’s most of them including Harper and _Iggy_ _Iffy_ _Icarus_.


----------



## a_majoor (25 Jan 2010)

Some good news for a change:

http://modeledbehavior.com/2010/01/21/o-canada-the-true-north-strong-and-free/



> *O Canada: The True North Strong and Free*
> Thursday ~ January 21st, 2010 in Economics | by Adam Ozimek
> 
> The true north really is strong and free these days. According to the Heritage Foundation’s 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, Canada now enjoys a greater degree of economic freedom than the United States.  They enjoy the most economic freedom in North America, as it were.  Those of us who watch Canada with a weary eye took note of this trend way back in April 2009, when the U.S. passed Canada in size of government relative to GDP. Remember this graph?
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (30 Jan 2010)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> ...
> Two points, and I know I’m repeating myself:
> 
> 1. There is only one taxpayer – you and me. Corporations can and do pay taxes but they do so only with the money they get (earn) from you and me. Corporate taxes are, indirectly, paid by us. It is the _indirect_ nature of corporate taxes that makes them inefficient – more expensive to collect. ‘We,’ consumers mostly, would pay less, overall, if there were *NO* corporate taxes at all and other taxes were increased to provide the ‘lost’ revenue; and
> ...




This, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_ probably gives you some insight into Prime Minister Harper’s *long term* plans:

 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/canadas-productivity-trap/article1449944/


> Globe Essay
> Canada's productivity trap
> *The harder we work, the less rich we seem to be. We need to emphasize education, innovation and trade to break free*
> 
> ...



To repeat a few key points:

•	_”A more productive economy grows faster, adapts better to changing circumstances, leads to lower prices, higher wages, and more jobs, improves living standards and affords more public goods.”_ Public goods include health care, national defence, roads and highways, public safety, public pension plan and so on and so forth;

•	Canadians work harder than do the people of most of the 30 OECD nations (8th out of 30) but our output per hour worked is only 17th of the 30. That’s what low productivity means: we work harder and produce less. That’s the problem;

•	The symptoms, in the 1990s, that made us unproductive, included –

o	a high national debt - the second-worst in the G7;

o	never ending deficits;

o	our national pension plan in trouble;

o	our bonds and stocks bore high-risk premiums; and

o	the corporate tax rate was significantly higher than our largest trading partner's;

•	Solving those problems – as Chrétien/Martin and Harper/Flaherty have done – did not improve our productivity. They were some of the symptoms, not the disease;

•	Competitiveness, which a weak dollar enhances by making our exports ‘cheaper’ ≠ Productivity, which a weak dollar retards by making e.g. new machinery more expensive;

•	While there is no single, simple or immediate fix to Canada’s structural problem, _”a concerted productivity strategy should encompass innovation, the labour force, markets and attitudes.”_ Attitudes, conditioned, for 40 years, to a ‘culture of entitlement’ may be hardest to change;

•	Education – in terms of quantity, quality and _focus_ is a major driver of high productivity because _innovation_ is one of the main keys to productivity and, as Mr. Lynch says, _”Innovation and a highly skilled work force go hand-in-hand in driving productivity in a knowledge-intensive, global economy;”_

•	_”Canada needs a market enlargement strategy that includes new economic partnerships with the “Asian triangle” of China, Japan and India,”_ while not ignoring our American markets or Europe;

•	_”Governments should place more emphasis on speed, agility and frameworks to support productivity, and less on process and entitlement,”_ which means that business must be ‘free’ and, indeed, encouraged (through e.g. the tax system) to trade more and to trade at higher and higher value levels; and

•	Governments need to get out of the way while encouraging (the tax system, again) _”better interaction between university researchers and business.”
_


----------



## Jed (30 Jan 2010)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> This, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_ probably gives you some insight into Prime Minister Harper’s *long term* plans:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/canadas-productivity-trap/article1449944/
> 
> ...


_

I especially agree with these points. From what I see of our current process driven government systems, and the natural tendency for people to maintain the status quo, and not to break any rice bowls, so to speak, our current Public Service is acting as a huge set of brakes to Canadian business production.

In the 30 years or so I have been in various government systems, I have seen an incredible loss of productive capability in our Public Service. I am not sure of the reasons for it or how to fix it though.

Some of it may be due to selecting programs and people for politically correct purposes rather that the right person to do the right job.

Some of it may be because our elected politicians broke faith with their employees, the rank and file, during past events like the sponsorship scandal etc.

Some of it may be dues to the baby boomer bump going through and a lot of good experienced people taking the 'freedom 55' option.

What we should do about it is get hard nosed on simplifying our existing processes and look hard at core tasks required rather than the decoration on the fringes.
_


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## a_majoor (30 Jan 2010)

More please:

http://imrightasrain.blogspot.com/2010/01/thank-you-flaherty-gst-cut-saved.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RightAsRain+%28Right+As+Rain%29



> *Thank you Flaherty - GST cut saved thousands of jobs*
> 
> Now, I am sure you will never here this in most media sources, but today the National Post is running a story on how a senior Liberal wants to raise the GST, and subsequently kill thousands of jobs.
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (1 Feb 2010)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_ website are a column by Conrad Black, a response from Quebec historian Éric Bédard and a further counter by Lord Black:

*Part 1 of 2*

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/12/19/conrad-black-quot-quebec-is-a-bore-quot.aspx


> Conrad Black: *"Quebec is a bore"*
> 
> Posted: December 19, 2009
> 
> ...





This was followed by a letter from Quebec historian Éric Bédard:

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2430481


> In defence of Quebec nationalists
> 
> National Post Published: Tuesday, January 12, 2010
> 
> ...



End of Part 1 of 2


----------



## Edward Campbell (1 Feb 2010)

*Part 2 of 2*

And now Back replies to his correspondent:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/01/30/conrad-black-myths-of-the-quiet-revolution.aspx


> Conrad Black: *Myths of the Quiet Revolution*
> 
> Posted: January 30, 2010
> 
> ...



We owe Black a debt for putting Duplessis and the _Great Darkness_ into some sensible perspective.  Duplessis was, to be sure, a home grown _fascist_ and, even, a bit of a _theocrat_; in that he was not unique ; so was a young Pierre Trudeau. But, it was Duplessis, as much as Lesage and all the others who, despite his innate _rural conservatism_, dragged Québec, kicking and screaming, into the 20th century.

But _Duplessis bashing_ became a fashionable, jejune cottage industry in the 1960s, led by none other than Trudeau and the _Cité libre_ gang. Now, my Great Aunt Florence’s house cat could have made a useful case against Duplessis regarding e.g. his anti-Sematism (a _Québecois_ rather than just a Duplessis failing in the first half of the 20th century) and his treatment of e.g. selected religious (Christian) minorities; one did not need to attend Harvard, _l’Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris_ and the London School of Economics to do that.

As to Black’s thesis: Québec is more than a “bore.” It is a social, economic and political anchor that _retards_ Canada, holding us, firmly, in the mid 20th century even as all our competitors adapt to the 21st.

It is tempting, especially by Québec nationalists, to ‘see’ Québec as _our_ version of the race/civil rights turmoil in America in the ‘60s. (See: Pierre Vallières’ _ Nègres blancs d'Amérique, autobiographie précoce d'un « terroriste » québécois_.) The goal was to equate Québec’s problems, which were, largely but not exclusively, _self inflicted wounds_ with the problems of social class and political power that afflicted American blacks. The analogy is false but it has been applied, with considerable enthusiasm and skill, throughout Canada and, indeed, in France. Propaganda works.

The solutions to Canada’s many and varied problems must include _solutions_ to the *least productive* elements of Canadian society: aboriginals, some minority communities and, above all, Québec.


----------



## Dennis Ruhl (1 Feb 2010)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> *Part 2 of 2*
> 
> 
> The solutions to Canada’s many and varied problems must include _solutions_ to the *least productive* elements of Canadian society: aboriginals, some minority communities and, above all, Québec.



As an Albertan, I think the only financial support given east of the Ottawa River should be bus tickets to west of the Ottawa River.  The productivity of regions that do develop industry is taxed dearly to subsidize other regions and actually discourage development.  The New South arose  from the corpse of the rust belt without subsidies.  All it took was a climate to encourage business.

At one time a business opening a plant in Cape Breton would receive major grants plus a 60% investment tax credit.  There were few takers because the business climate was wrong.  Many of the plants that opened later folded.  Paying a person, people, or province for their inefficiency never solves their economic problems.


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## Edward Campbell (1 Feb 2010)

Dennis Ruhl said:
			
		

> As an Albertan, I think the only financial support given east of the Ottawa River should be bus tickets to west of the Ottawa River.  The productivity of regions that do develop industry is taxed dearly to subsidize other regions and actually discourage development.  *The New South arose  from the corpse of the rust belt without subsidies.  All it took was a climate to encourage business.*
> 
> At one time a business opening a plant in Cape Breton would receive major grants plus a 60% investment tax credit.  There were few takers because the business climate was wrong.  Many of the plants that opened later folded.  Paying a person, people, or province for their inefficiency never solves their economic problems.




No quite true. The development of the _sun belt_ was heavily subsidized by governments, mainly during the '60s and '70s and especially by the US defence budget - the biggest pork-barreling/subsidizing programme in human history.


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## a_majoor (1 Feb 2010)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> No quite true. The development of the _sun belt_ was heavily subsidized by governments, mainly during the '60s and '70s and especially by the US defence budget - the biggest pork-barreling/subsidizing programme in human history.



The catalyst was even earlier, when Lyndon Johnson used the US space program and the moon race as a means to industrialize the South in the early 1960's. The Cape Canaveral launch site was chosen for geographic reasons, but the rest of the swath of NASA facilities across the Southern US is mostly the legacy of Johnson's use of the pork barrel to get votes and funding for the space program.

All that money and engineering horsepower paid off the way Johnson hoped it would, and the political climate (such as "right to work" legislation in opposition to Wagner unionization) ensured the gains were kept.


----------



## a_majoor (8 Feb 2010)

More alternative models to consider:

http://jr2020.blogspot.com/2010/02/never-mind-prorogation-lets-do-it-texas.html



> *Never mind prorogation, let’s do it Texas style*
> 
> Texas has a part-time legislature of 181 citizen legislators who meet for 140 days every second year. Texans consider government a threat to liberty and prosperity:
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (19 Feb 2010)

Ottawa is worried Canadians are taking on too much debt? Pay off that 1/2 trillion you owe and cover the other 1/2 trillion of unfunded liabilities before you start lecturing _us_, Kemo Sabe:

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2570414



> *Ottawa to toughen mortgage rules*
> 
> Paul Vieira, Financial Post  Published: Tuesday, February 16, 2010
> 
> ...



And here is what is really dragging us down. You you have $15 + K to contribute right now you end your liability?


----------



## a_majoor (22 Feb 2010)

If New Zeland can do this, so can we:

http://chasingapplepie.blogspot.com/2010/02/getting-our-fiscal-house-back-in-order.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ChasingApplePie+%28Chasing+Apple+Pie%29



> *Getting Our Fiscal House Back in Order*
> 
> We have just gone through the worst recession since WWII. Our unemployment rate is over 8%. We racked up a deficit of over $56bill. Now how to get our fiscal house back in order. How do we get rid of the deficit, pay down the debt, balance the budget and get back to surplus?
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (4 Mar 2010)

While cast for the United States, these principles apply equally to Canada:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/03/03/six-reasons-to-downsize-the-federal-government/



> *Six Reasons to Downsize the Federal Government*
> 
> Posted by Chris Edwards
> 
> ...


----------



## Jed (4 Mar 2010)

If New Zeland can do this, so can we:

http://chasingapplepie.blogspot.com/2010/02/getting-our-fiscal-house-back-in-order.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ChasingApplePie+%28Chasing+Apple+Pie%29

In taking this approach New Zealand must have broken a lot of 'Rice Bowls' in their Federal Public Service. I do not think the elected parliamentarians of Canada with its current highly partisan political party makeup have the courage to take on various governmental service organizations mainly based in Ottawa. The city of Ottawa would resist this approach to the last man standing.

I believe this would be true for any of our provincial civil service organizations and the corresponding provincial capital city as well.
To make this happen, government would require the power and authority of a Dictatorship.


A great theory but how do you implement it?


----------



## a_majoor (5 Mar 2010)

Jed said:
			
		

> If New Zeland can do this, so can we:
> 
> http://chasingapplepie.blogspot.com/2010/02/getting-our-fiscal-house-back-in-order.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ChasingApplePie+%28Chasing+Apple+Pie%29
> 
> ...



There is no doubt at all that civil servants will fight to the last taxpayer, and it will take a very committed government to implement such a plan.

A few factoids might help the government make it's case though. The average civil servant makes 17% more than the equivalent taxpayer in the private sector, and 80% of civil servants have pensions, compared to 23% of taxpayers working in the private sector.

Once enough voters have grasped the implications of that, the government might find the voting public will be much more supportive of such ideas.


----------



## Rifleman62 (6 Mar 2010)

And the civil servants will point to the MP's salary and pension which is very rich.

http://www.benefitscanada.com/content/legacy/Content/2000/10-00/sweetdeal.html

Jean Chretien brought forward legislation, revising how MP's were compensated. Their tax free living benefits where rolled into salary, with a corresponding amount to represent income tax etc. Salary's went up considerably (40% ??). Best five years went up, up, up.


----------



## SeaKingTacco (6 Mar 2010)

I been to New Zealand.  It is a most entrepreneurial country.  For example, Postal outlets are all privately run, usually as part of a store or shop.  Mail service is very efficient and quite cheap. They also do vehicle licensing and registration, which is ridiculously easy to do compared to any Canadian jurisdiction. 

Small business seems to thrive and everyone seems to have a business angle going.  Even with a centre-left govt, there is a real energy down there.

The reason that New Zealand was able to beat down the size of their government has to do with the fact that they literally hit the debt wall around about 1990.  they literally could not borrow another cent internationally.  They were forced to dramatically reduce the civil service, sell off almost all crown agencies and stop all subsidy programs, just to survive.  Was it done pain free?  No- but I have to say that Kiwis are measurably better off than they were 20 years ago.  If I didn't live in Canada, the next place in the world I would live is NZ.


----------



## a_majoor (7 Mar 2010)

Our budget might be setting the stage for limited NZ style changes:

http://davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=1119



> *Baby steps*
> 
> The Dominion budget tabled this week (or "federal" as we now say, in emulation of the Americans) was full of restraint. We have been assured of this by every media source I've seen, and the notion gains additional plausibility from the mild endorsements of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and other worthy, fairly independent monitors. "Baby steps in the right direction" was the message from another policy think tank, that focuses on family issues.
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (9 Mar 2010)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from _The Mark_ is a somewhat provocative article by former Clerk of the Privy Council Alex Himelfarb:

http://themarknews.com/articles/1029-canada-s-silent-transformation


> Canada's Silent Transformation
> *Canada is changing – subtly, profoundly, and without a public conversation. It's time we start to shape that change, before it's shaped for us.*
> 
> Alex Himelfarb
> ...




Himelfarb is right about all the symptoms: _all politics, all the time_, constant, unplanned change, _lack of public engagement_; but he’s wrong about the disease. He describes how the change is being made:  in Canada change “happens without much talk. It happens through entropy, selective inattention, and incremental action.” And, despite Himelfarb’s rose coloured look back, that’s how most change has always happened in Canada, in Britain, in Imperial Rome and, doubtless, when Og was figuring out how to manoeuvre his log across the river some 100,000 years ago.

What bothers Himelfarb is that the small, Central Canadian _elite_, to which he belonged, is no longer _planning_ and _managing_ things, “without much talk.” In fact, most of that _elite_ is in the shadows, mistrusted – often unfairly – by the government of the day, replaced by bolder, colder _ideologues_ from different _places_. Not that Himelfarb _et al_ were not ideologues; they were; but their ideology was carefully hidden from view, camouflaged, as it were, because it was/is also the prevailing ideology of the mainstream media and the _chattering classes_. 

Meisel’s view of Canada was, in my opinion, mostly wrong – although I will agree that he gave a fair representation of Canada from 1970 through to 2000 as being enamoured of and satisfied with _coalition_ of big business, _big government_, big banks, _big labour_, big insurance and the Liberal Party of Canada (even when it wasn’t in power).

I think we are, simply, casting off the failed, _statist_ model that Himelfarb _et al_ love and reverting to a more *l*iberal, independent of the _elites_, type of decision making.


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## Old Sweat (9 Mar 2010)

I think Mr Himmelfarb was appointed Clerk of the Privvy Council because of the depth of his knowledge and experience in social policy. As such, I suggest his inclination was towards government control and social engineering, along with a tendency to believe that was good for Ontario and Quebec was good for the rest of the country. These are attitudes that are anethema to much of the small l liberals in this country. 

I also believe he is sincere and feels deeply that his attitudes are or should be held by the people at large. 

This is dangerous thinking unless you are a fan of the granny state. Thuc, after you read the piece, you can have a large drink on me. I will pay for it by buying you another when next we meet.


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## Brad Sallows (10 Mar 2010)

In the decade roughly '75 to '85 "they" ran up our debt; in the decade+ roughly '85 to '97 "they" had a very minor role in rectifying the revenue-expense gap and were fortunate that "invisible hands" led to conditions of falling interest rates and increasing revenues; in the decade roughly '97 to '07 "they" mismanaged the public finances by failing to prepare for the next downturn by sufficiently correcting prior overspending.  "They" are in the process of planning to follow estimates based on rosy assumptions that we can either grow or tax ourselves back into balance, and almost uniformly deaf to the notion that spending should or can be reduced.

"They" have had 30+ years to "plan" to deal with the most fundamental of "complex issues" - the public fiscal policies which enable all other public policies - and mostly failed.

>"Somehow tax decisions have been divorced from the services and public goods they buy."

Looking on the same evidence from a different vantage point, I see that somehow public spending was divorced from the revenue stream necessary to support it.

There are two intractable conditions "they" either can not or will not grasp:
1) None of "them" are as smart as they (and their enthusiasts) think they are, relative to the complexity of the issues to be considered.
2) "They" will never get inside the decision cycle of the populace (except by literally holding the populace in check at the point of guns).

Failure to acknowledge, accept, and work within those limitations leads to cascading subsequent failures.


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## GAP (11 Mar 2010)

Tory triumph: They know where they're going
Article Link
Lawrence Martin  Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2010 

I recall some years ago,” Liberal MP Keith Martin was saying this week, “when Stephen Harper said he was going to change the face of Canada, that when he got through with it, you wouldn't recognize the place.” The former Reform/Alliance MP went on to say that, while he didn't agree with the direction, Mr. Harper is well on his way.

Sometimes lost in the continuing uproar over the way the Prime Minister does things – i.e., with all the subtlety of Vlad the Impaler – is what he's actually done.

A Conservative PM will be ultimately judged on how far he's advanced the conservative agenda. In this context, there are things to behold.

Start with taxation. Through their long history, Liberals usually felt they could propose increased taxes without fear of a scorched-earth backlash. The prevailing wisdom was that a higher tax regime was necessary to preserve a gentler, more compassionate society than the one next door. Look now, though, and watch the Grits, even with that big deficit out there, running from the subject, afraid to even mention it. The first four years of Mr. Harper has poisoned the ground they walked on.

A Conservative staple is law and order, a crackdown on crime, moving the penal system to the right. Even though crime rates slide, the Tories trot out bill after bill aimed at filling the jails. They spurn Supreme Court rulings on Omar Khadr. They go after the gun registry. Anyone who opposes them, anyone who puts in a word for civil liberties, gets hit with the “soft on crime” tag. It's crude, but it works. The Liberals stammer.

On foreign policy, the Conservatives' aim was to turn soft power hard. They've largely succeeded, moving the country from its more traditional honest-broker role to a morality-based “us versus them” partisanship. If the Liberals object, say to Mr. Harper's one-sided policy in the Middle East, out comes the rhetorical sledgehammer. Their criticism means they're anti-Israel, maybe even anti-Semitic.

Almost everywhere you look on the starboard side of the spectrum, Team Harper is scoring. National programs such as daycare and the Kelowna Accord on native health and education have been scrapped. Multiculturalism, that old Liberal fundamental, is being curbed as limits to cultural tolerance are advocated. The country's new citizenship guide has a more conservative lean. A Conservative goal has been to take the flag from the Liberals. Their own brand of patriotism – The True North Strong and Free – is doing it.

On another long-time Tory staple, a revitalized and glorified military, it's the same. The government's big defence buildup, which began under Paul Martin, is only now set to taper off for deficit-fighting purposes. Anyone raising a dissenting voice is obliterated with the same kind of demagogic sloganeering as used on other issues. On this one, it's a shot at their patriotism: They don't support our troops.

Quietly, there is an advance on another front – decentralization, getting out of the way of big business, getting out of the way of provincial jurisdiction. Michael McBane, national co-ordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition, says a federal retreat on national health care is clearly detectable. Measures to have the provinces comply with the Canada Health Act aren't being enforced. The Health Council of Canada has had its mandate changed, Mr. McBane says, so it no longer monitors Paul Martin's health accord with the provinces. The feds' promise of a wait-times guarantee has been taken off the radar screen. The silence over the growth of private for-profit clinics is deafening and, says Mr. McBane, a national pharmaceuticals strategy has been all but abandoned.

One area in which the Conservatives lost their ideological way was their proclivity for big spending. But their new budgeting augurs a shut-off of the taps. Their consistent tax cutting, meanwhile, has resulted in a smaller revenue base that will inhibit future Liberal-styled big-spending initiatives.

Not one for fancy phrases, Mr. Harper has never articulated a vision. He just enacts one. To look at the country now – compared to the welfare-state, peacenik era of Pierre Trudeau – is to see a remarkably different coloration.

Whether or not the public likes it, right-side values are taking hold. The visionless party, philosophically at loose ends, is the Liberal one. The governing side knows where it's going and how to get there.


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## a_majoor (14 Mar 2010)

Keynes as the Wizard of OZ....

http://biggovernment.com/dmitchell/2010/03/13/keynesian-economics-and-the-wizard-of-oz/



> *Keynesian Economics and the Wizard of Oz*
> by Dan Mitchell
> 
> When Dorothy and her friends finally reach Oz, they present themselves to the almighty Wizard, only to eventually discover that he is just an illusion maintained by a charlatan hiding behind a curtain. This seems eerily akin to to the state of Keynesian economics. It does not matter that Keynesianism isn’t working for Obama. It does not matter that it didn’t work for Bush, or for Japan in the 1990s, or for Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1930s.
> ...


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## a_majoor (15 Apr 2010)

Ezra Levant on opening our options. I'd go one further and say run a trans national pipeline to provide for all the provinces and allow access to the European market as well (this neutralizes the Russian oil card), and of course I fully agree with widening our customer base and including nations with common interests (like India) as a priority:

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2908078



> *A pipeline to Asia*
> 
> Ezra Levant, National Post  Published: Thursday, April 15, 2010
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (2 May 2010)

A humorous(?) look at the way the economy is run these days:



> Q.  What is Ontario 's Economic Stimulus payment?
> A.  It is money that the provincial government will send to taxpayers.
> 
> Q..  Where will the government get this money?
> ...


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## a_majoor (10 May 2010)

Make no mistake, Canada is in the same boat as Greece and the PIIGS, we have just been bailing a bit faster. Demographics alone tells a frightening future story for us, and our economy is tightly entwined with the other western nations facing these problems so even if we are somehow able to avoid the trap on our own, we could still be pulled down like a lifeboat on the Titanic:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/10/the_welfare_states_death_spiral_105503.html



> *The Welfare State's Death Spiral*
> By Robert Samuelson
> 
> WASHINGTON -- What we're seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state. This isn't Greece's problem alone, and that's why its crisis has rattled global stock markets and threatens economic recovery. Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven't fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies.
> ...


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## GAP (19 Jun 2010)

Hey, who knew?...................

 ‘Not a bailout’: the great Canadian bank caper
RALPH SURETTE Sat. Jun 19 - 4:54 AM
Article Link

You know how wonderful Canadian banks are. They didn’t fail when others did, and didn’t need to be bailed out. We are standing tall among nations in that regard, and the Harper government can stick out its chest and preach the Canadian model of prudence and caution to a profligate world. Even the Americans are agog at our fiscal virtue.

Plus, our economy has been recovering from recession faster than others just in time for the G20 meeting in Toronto. It’s wonderful, fake lake and all.

Does this sound too cute? Here’s the inevitable other side of the story. The banks were actually "bailed out" to the tune of $125 billion just before and after the 2008 election — in the form of a massive purchase of questionable mortgages and other "rotten paper," in the words of one economist, held by them. This was done through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a federal agency. The taxpayer is now on the hook for these mortgages, 40 per cent of which are considered at risk, with more to come if interest rates rise and the economy dips again.

But the kicker is this: Hardly anybody noticed. It wasn’t an issue in the election, and the financial press said nothing. A few tried, and are still trying, to raise the alarm. Michel Chossudovsky, a retired University of Ottawa economist and head of the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalization, pointed out that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had announced a $2.3-billion surplus in the offing before the election, then quickly changed it to a $64-billion deficit. He argues that the entire deficit was for the first installments of the bailout, which the prime minister described as "not a bailout" but a "market transaction."

Some other economists give the government more leeway, saying it was doing what others were doing — injecting "liquidity" into the banking system at a time when credit was threatening to seize up. But the sheer scale of the amount, plus the continuation of the banks’ excessive lending practices (despite their image of prudence relative to the Americans), have led to something else. Remember that government money was supposed to stimulate infrastructure projects. What we got instead looks like a housing and consumer credit bubble — and the illusion of economic growth while other countries faltered.

Alarmed, last winter the government and the banks clamped down on lending with new rules. The May figures show a nearly 10 per cent drop in housing values across Canada. Did they move too late and pop the bubble — and the "recovery" with it? Just in time for the G20?

That’s the economics, and we’ll wait and see on that. What’s more disturbing is the politics — this business of nobody noticing. Here’s a related story for you. Laugh or cry, as you wish.

It’s apparently just dawning, but in the 2007 budget, Parliament unwittingly gave away its right to oversee government borrowing. That’s right, it didn’t know. For 140 years, government had to bring borrowing bills before Parliament. Now it doesn’t have to. "Shame on us" for not catching it, says Senator Lowell Murray, who has introduced two private member’s bills to reverse this to no avail. Tough luck, says the government. Parliament voted and that’s that.

The fact that the Harper government has taken to presenting budgets in huge U.S.-style omnibus bills with everything but the kitchen sink in them, and daring the muddled opposition to vote them down and trigger an election, is considered the trick that led to the oversight. I have another theory. Opposition and media are so addled by scandals and other shenanigans — Mulroney/Schreiber, Guergis/Jaffer, Maxime Bernier and the biker lady etc. — that everything crucial is passing them by. Stephen Harper loves this.

As for the banks, here’s the rest of the story. Bank profits have boomed after the "not a bailout." The Big Six have made some $5 billion in each of the last two quarters. Last year, the banks gave their top dudes over $8 billion in bonuses. This year, they’ve put away $5 billion so far for this exercise in legalized theft. Meanwhile, the Harper tax cuts — which will have Canada with the lowest corporate tax rates in the G7 by 2012 — is giving the banks a gift of some $200 million per quarter at present rates of profit.

Voices in the wilderness call for banks to be regulated like a public utility, which is what they are, in order to stop this "wealth by stealth" operation. Others call on the federal government to resume borrowing, on its own behalf and that of the provinces and municipalities, from the Bank of Canada, bypassing commercial rates — as it did before 1974. With Harper in power and nobody noticing anything, good luck with that. 
end


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## a_majoor (19 Jun 2010)

"Banks a public utility"?

Please get that person a pass to the nearest Economics 101 class.

The biggest danger is the centralization of economic power and the ability of the State to intervene in the economy (usually for the benefit of their favored clients). If "we" really wanted to ensure the economic debt bubble crisis won't happen again, we could look to the idea of "free banking", where individual banks set their own interest rates and lend according to whatever criteria they choose. Market forces would ensure banks would tend to be prudent and match borrowers to depositers, any bank which didn't do this well would eventually go bankrupt. Only the bank, its circle of depositers and loan clients would be affected, and other institutions would be able to step in and quickly pick up the pieces.


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## Brad Sallows (22 Jun 2010)

"The banks were actually "bailed out" to the tune of $125 billion just before and after the 2008 election — in the form of a massive purchase of questionable mortgages and other "rotten paper," in the words of one economist, held by them. This was done through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a federal agency. The taxpayer is now on the hook for these mortgages, 40 per cent of which are considered at risk, with more to come if interest rates rise and the economy dips again."

What sort of arrant stupidity is that?  The CMHC - and hence the taxpayer - was already on the hook for the CMHC-insured  mortgages.  The banks were already protected by the CMHC insurance - how is that a bailout?  The banks sold the mortgages to the government - how is that a bailout? 

Another paragon of the journalistic "profession" makes his mark.

I'd like to see the "questionable mortgages" and "rotten paper" documented - its existence described and proven - before believing in any such thing.  Who is the "one economist" whose credibility is on the line?

See: The Insured Mortgage Purchase Program


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## foresterab (7 Jul 2010)

One from the GlobeInvestor.com buisness articles...have bolded some portions of the article that stood out for me.

In Quebec, IBM finds a better way to get things done
Jeremy Torobin 
20:09 EST Tuesday, Jul 06, 2010 

/servlet/ArticleNews/print/GI/20100706/escenic_1630919/stocks/news /servlet/ArticleNews/print/GI/20100706/escenic_1630919/stocks/news 	 
Ottawa — For the 2,800 technicians and engineers at IBM’s sprawling plant in the idyllic Eastern Townships, finding new and better ways to operate isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. 
Every product the Bromont, Que., factory makes quickly becomes obsolescent – which means the plant must constantly adapt to new technologies and apply new skills if it is to survive. 
The factory, 75 kilometres east of Montreal, started out in 1972 making Selectric typewriters. It has worked its way up to become IBM’s biggest facility for testing and assembling advanced microchips. Its products go into the planet’s most popular video-game consoles and fastest supercomputers. 
Arch-rivals Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo entrust the Bromont plant with testing and assembling the ultra-powerful microchips that go into the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii. That’s like Coke and Pepsi using the same lab to test their formulas. 
IBM has provided a solid foundation for the factory’s success, having invested nearly $1.3-billion in the Bromont plant since its founding. Still, manufacturing director Ray Leduc argues that it’s a combination of relentless training and an egalitarian philosophy that has allowed the Bromont plant to boost its productivity while cutting costs and keeping its head count stable through the recession. 
“We don’t compete on labour rates, we compete on skill, on innovation, on time to market,” said Mr. Leduc, a veteran from the typewriter days, who was appointed last year to be a part-time adviser to Canada’s National Research Council. “A Formula 1 driver is also a machine operator. That’s the model we use: *We take a very sophisticated piece of equipment that costs a lot of capital, and we give it to a very highly skilled person in whom we’ve invested a tremendous amount of development, and have them run it better than anybody in the world.” * FMSTART Cat:e528746c-3414-401a-b14b-50247e3bdf01Forum:2d13dc33-9921-4d4a-815f-e809277631e4FMEND 
Bromont’s high-performance model could provide clues into how to increase labour productivity in other parts of Canadian industry. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney has repeatedly warned that Canada must boost its output if we are to maintain our standard of living in the face of foreign competition and an aging population. 
Mr. Carney notes that productivity growth declined during the recent recession, the first time that has happened in three decades. Productivity usually grows during slowdowns because companies are forced to do more with less. 
“Canadians don’t understand how productivity relates to them, and as a result it has a bad connotation,” said Craig Alexander, chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank. “But productivity ultimately means Canadians being able to have a better standard of living … It’s the most fundamental thing in terms of the economy, and the really discouraging thing is Canada’s performance over the last decade-and-a-half has been absolutely atrocious.” 
While Canada’s productivity has crept ahead by only about 0.7 per cent a year during the past decade, managers at Bromont say their ability to harness the creativity of their work force has allowed some units to boost productivity by an impressive 10 per cent or more a year. 

Investor Education: Productivity 
Part 1: Why investors should care about productivity 
Part 2: Want to get paid more? Higher productivity could lead to that 
Part 3: Getting more from less: Productive companies for investors 
Part 4: What businesses can learn from hockey history 	 
An important part of the plant’s productivity recipe is a constant emphasis on looking for new and better ways to do things. In an average year, the plant’s innovative practices result in 12 patents, usually in advanced areas of microtechnology. 
*Another element of the Bromont formula is maintaining a stable, happy work force. The plant has gone through constant, sometimes radical transformations with many of the same people. Turnover is a mere 1 to 2 per cent a year, compared with rates closer to 20 per cent at Asian manufacturers. 
“In a lot of places in southeast Asia there’s the operators, there’s the engineers, there’s the management, and it’s very hierarchical,” Dave Danovitch, the plant’s chief engineer, said. “Here, we try to eliminate the hierarchy and get these people together to listen to what they’re saying and respect each other’s ideas.’’ 
Regular meetings infuse staff with Japanese ideas such as kaizen, which emphasize brainstorming and continuous small improvements. Employees are encouraged to bring their ideas to management*. 
For instance, one of Bromont’s many patents came after three employees huddled together to solve a problem they ran into when they were testing thumbnail-sized chips. The traditional pieces used to hold the modules in the test bed couldn’t adjust for slight differences in size from part to part, which resulted in the tester rejecting potentially good parts. 
The team came up with a self-centring, spring-loaded concept, which, after several trials and designs, was able to solve the problem using such a novel approach that IBM decided to seek patent protection. 
“It really is from the employee base up,” said Maureen Jodoin, Bromont’s controller. “Everyone on that floor is a problem-solver.” 
People in the plant receive an average of five days a year of formal training in skills development, but that figure doesn’t include on-the-job training. IBM encourages staff to take on new roles and responsibilities. 
*A program dubbed “three by 10” aims to have employees’ responsibilities change three times every 10 years. “You get more efficient problem-solving, and more efficient team-working, because you know the impact an idea of yours might have on another group,” said Claire Langan, manager of innovation, who is an embodiment of the program, having held 10 different jobs in her 28 years at the plant*. 
Andrew Reid, founder of Toronto-based corporate training firm Big Fish Interactive, says companies of all sizes stand to benefit from fully engaging their employees. 
“One of the greatest competitive edges a company can give themselves, especially these days, is getting each staff member to see their role in contributing to positive change,” Mr. Reid said. “There’s a massive difference between just doing the job and being a high-performance culture.” 

Christinne Muschi For The Globe and Mail
Microelectonics for the gaming industry, being inspected at the IBM plant in Bromont, Quebec.

Harnessing university brainpower 	 
While IBM Bromont managers try to make full use of the expertise inside their plant, they also want to capitalize on outside intellects to help bring products to market more quickly. 
IBM is teaming with Dalsa Semiconductors Ltd., Sherbrooke University and the federal and provincial governments to build a centre that will focus on a new generation of microtechnology. 
The centre, which will open next year in Bromont, is intended to harness university brainpower, says Normand Bourbonnais, Bromont’s director of technology development. It will aim to speed up development of crucial applications such as 3-D technology that could be used to help doctors find and treat cancers and other diseases, Mr. Bourbonnais said. 
“There’s unbelievable knowledge in the universities and the network of research associations that we have in Canada, but these guys don’t know what are the real problems that we’re facing because we don’t work with them,” he said. “So they work on stuff that they believe is important, and it is – it may become a product in 10 years or 15 years from now. With this centre, what we want to do is bring researchers right with us so they start working on projects that we need in five years.” 
About 250 people will work at the centre, including 200 postgraduate students who will rotate through the centre over five years. IBM and Dalsa have committed a combined total of almost $41-million to help fund the centre over its first five years, while Industry Canada has pledged $83-million and the Quebec government is spending $95-million. The partners are also working with other companies in the area and in the microtechnology field to get additional support, Mr. Bourbonnais said. 

Smart manufacturing 	 
10%-plus 
Average annual productivity gain for IBM Bromont’s business units 
16% 
Reduction in the plant's energy consumption from 2007-2009 
40 to 50 million 
Parts produced per year 
$650-million 
Export value per year 
12 
Average number of the plant's innovative practices that are translated into patents each year


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## Edward Campbell (4 Sep 2010)

Army.ca _regulars_ will know that:

1.	I harp, mercilessly, on _*productivity*_ (or lack of same in Canada) – which just might be the most boring subject in the world; and

2.	I am a ‘fan’ (I guess that’s the right word) of Kevin Lynch. I had the pleasure of working for him, for a bit, while still in uniform and we still meet, less and less frequently as I get older and older, at a handful of social events.

This opinion piece, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ is classic Lynch: it’s cogent and tightly reasoned and it’s all about economics:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/another-new-world-order/article1695863/?cmpid=rss1


> Another new world order
> *The planet has been completely reshaped in the first decade of the 21st century, and Canada mustn't squander its opportunity to reposition*
> 
> Kevin Lynch
> ...




A couple of quibbles:

1.	Mr. Lynch misrepresents Francis Fukuyama. I’m about 99.9% sure that Lynch knows better and so I guess that he’s using the _End of History_ as shorthand for the “irrational enthusiasm” that pervaded policy thinking in the later ‘80s and early ‘90s. Fukuyama actually predicted an _evolution_ away from the worst sort of *illiberal* political systems because, quite simply, they don’t work. He thought that Western liberal democracy was (is) the best of the available models but he did not predict that it, and it alone, would reign supreme. There is not a complete disconnect between e.g. Fukuyama and Fareed Zakaria – one leads to the other and Zakaria uses Fukuyama, amongst others, to illustrate why liberal democracy is not the only acceptable model for the future but why capitalism, albeit heavily tempered (regulated) capitalism, probably is; and

2.	Lynch says that there is an _“opportunity for Canada to stake out new markets in emerging-economy giants like China, India and Brazil, to refocus our market presence in the United States toward rapidly growing regions and sectors, and to make Canada more innovative in what we produce and more productive in how we produce it.”_ I have no argument with the last bits - refocusing our relationships (there are many) with America and being more innovative and productive – but I think that it is time we decoupled Brazil (and Russia) from the list of emerging great, even super powers. China and India will, almost certainly, join America, by 2035 or so, as global superpowers. Brazil and Russia will, I am certain, find ways to fail. 

Staking out new markets, especially in Asia, requires more than just trade negotiations; it requires a political/policy shift, too. If we want to expand our Asian markets we must, first, expand our ‘connections’ with Asia – diplomatic and political, to be sure, but personal and business, too. We need to exploit our growing Asian-Canadian business community to ‘spearhead’ our expansion into Asia. And it’s a two way street; if we want to sell we must (continue to) buy, too. We also need to be more ‘balanced’ in how we treat Asia in the world. China is not always wrong and the USA is not always right; the Chinese are very sensitive to foreign reactions; they hope for nuance; too often they get mindless ‘lockstep’ with whatever the US says.


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## a_majoor (4 Sep 2010)

Mr Lynch may not have given enough weight to the "information revolution". The ability to dis-intermediate virtually everything has essentially ended State monopolies and capitalist monosopies, cartels and oligarchies.

A very stable structure built up over decades and more is finding the foundations crumbling, as people can now successfully challenge the centralized structures of the old order, countering "narratives", exposing corruption and bad dealing, moving capital and labour around at speeds that confound all expectations and generating new technologies which supplement and replace the old. Globalization is really a manifestation of the information age (finding the best products and best prices is so much easier now).

Demographics is certainly an important factor, but much longer term (the demographic crash in Russia and the West will be underway in the mid 2020's, while China's "One Child" policy will generate social instability rising about the same time). 

As for climate change, a "little ice age" will certainly be a disaster as cooling conditions affect global crop yields, but the timing of this is highly uncertain, as are the potential remedies. Canada was first explored and settled during the last "little ice age" with 16th century technology, so I think we should be able to dig in and carry on in this regard.


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## Edward Campbell (4 Sep 2010)

I think Lynch acknowledges the importance of the _information revolution_ as an agent of change but I think most senior economists are still uncertain about how important it remains in that role. There are so many diverse elements of the _information revolution_: some, clearly, have a major economic impact and Lynch described them. Others, including how _information_ might change politics which might then produce policy changes are less obvious.

China's one child policy has, pretty much, run its course. While there is/will be a 'bubble' of too many single men passing through the system the Chinese have adapted: girls are now as, maybe even more, valuable than boys - even in some rural areas - and non Han Chinese East Asian brides are appearing, more and more often in China, today. I really, really doubt that the one child policy is going to produce *serious* problems. The Chinese, like everyone whose GDP gets them past 'third world' status, are now having fewer and fewer children - which is what Zhou Enlai (who died before the one child policy was, finally, implemented) intended.

Lynch examines climate change, of whatever sort, in purely economic terms - which I believe is the only way to treat it.


Edit: typo


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## Kirkhill (4 Sep 2010)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I think Lynch acknowledges the importance of the _information revolution_ as an agent of change but I think most senior economists are still uncertain about how important it remains in that role. There are so many diverse elements of the _information revolution_: some, clearly, have a major economic impact and Lynch described them. Others, including how _information_ might change politics which might then produce policy changes are less obvious.
> ...



Is Mr. Lynch's opinion coloured by his life as a planner?


The ability of the communications revolution to overcome boundaries, barriers and other obstacles (both physical and civil) poses the same challenges that buccaneers, corsairs, sea beggars, Angevins, victualling brothers, vikings, Batavians, Illyrians, Delians, Phoenicians and Minoans posed to his counter-parts  over the millenia. 

Successful counterpoint to them were to come to terms with taxpaying traders like the Radhanites or to establish tax exempt institutions like the Cluniac abbeys and the Templars.  Or they could establish taxhavens like the Freistadts of the HRE, the communes of Angevin France or the Burghs of Willliam I's Scotland in imitation of the maritime republics of Italy.

Can he envision a world where, if only for a generation or so, society is allowed the freedom to breathe and also to discover the sting of necessity, the mother or all invention?

Not doubting the best intentions of him and his ilk, they can't protect everybody from everything all the time.  Just like trying to defend everything.....

William Webb Ellis, student at Rugby school, inventor of the game of Rugby "who, in flagrant disregard for the rules, picked up the ball and ran with it".

Buccaneers advance humanity.


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## Edward Campbell (4 Sep 2010)

I think Mr. Lynch's opinion and indeed his life as a planner and bureaucrat are informed by his education as an economist. He has a _passion_ for rationality and for _productivity_ in theory and practice. He is, in other words, a utilitarian. That's probably why I agree with him. We throwbacks to a clearer, 19th century point of view are few and far between.

There's nothing wrong with buccaneers (or barbarians) changing the rule so long as the 'greater good' for the greater number is advanced.


Edit: sentence structure (added the word "for")


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## Kirkhill (4 Sep 2010)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> ....There's nothing wrong with buccaneers (or barbarians) changing the rule so long as the 'greater good' for the greater number is advanced.



Unfortunately freedom to experiment means bad new ideas get thrown up with the good ones.  But without seeing the new ideas in practice how would you have the opportunity to distinguish the good and the bad?

Were New Lanark and New Harmony good ideas or bad?  One succeeded. One Failed. They generated an educated working class, a philanthropic middle class, the Co-operative movement and underpinned socialism.


David Dale and Robert Owen, economic and social bucaneers that were prototypical Hanoverian models for Horatio Alger, could only have done what they did in the deregulated Whiggish society of Britain of the early 1800s.


By the time Mills, both James and John could start putting Jeremy Bentham's notions into common usage it could by argued, by Ferguson amongst others, that Britain was already approaching its best before date and that Victorian Britain represented merely the autumnal harvest of Adam Smith's fruit.

That suggests to me, a long time supporter of the advantages of Empire, that Britain would have been better served if the Methodists had had less success and the Little Englanders more.  Merchants then Missionaries then the Military: with the last being the most costly.

I believe it might be time to let the free-booters have a looser rein for a while.


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## Edward Campbell (4 Sep 2010)

Yes, indeed, and had my dear old Gran had wheels she might have been a dump truck. History is never very clear to those who are living it.

But to carry your analogy further: one wonders if America _circa_ 2010 doesn't resemble jingoistic, empire building Britain _circa_ 1850, when the rot set in?

Further: how many great nations or empires have risen, fallen and then risen again? Egypt? No. Babylon? No. Persia? No. Greece? No. Rome? No. Byzantium? No. The Caliphate? No. The Mongols? No. Spain? No. The Moghuls? No. France? No. Britain? Japan? No. No ... America? Dunno. China? Yes. I wonder why.


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## Kirkhill (4 Sep 2010)

Granny's mobility aside I agree that the crystal ball isn't crystal clear.  I also agree that the US could possibly be at the same place Britain was in the 1850s. In which case China may have to wait another century before the US power wanes enough to get her kick at the can.   In the meantime perhaps we should expect repeats of the following?

Arrow War (2nd Opium) 1856-1860
Taiping Civil War 1851-1862
Punti-Hakka Clan Wars 1855-1867
Nien Rebellion 1851-1868
Muslim Rebellion 1862-1877
Panthay Rebellion 1856-1873
Miao Rebellion 1854-1873
Tonghak Rebellion of Korea 1894
Sino-Japanese War 1894-1895
Boxer Rebellion 1900
Sun Yat Sen’s Revolution 1905-1912
Warlords 1912-1949
Sino-Japanese War 1937-1945
Mao Tse Tung’s Revolution 1927-1949

Obviously I realize that there is no direct analogy to the Opium wars.  However I produce the list to show that: a century is a long time; that foreign powers will impact on China just as much as they will on Brazil and Russia; and that China suffers from the many internal fault lines derived from any population of a billion and more people rubbing shoulders.

Finally, with respect to your point about the various European and Mediterranean empires I would counter: Which China?

Which China, of which dynasty, ruled from which region do you wish to put up against which “Western” Empire?  I suggest that China is not a country. It is a region just as Europe, and more broadly, the West, is.

If I follow the money trail in the West I see a continuous line of trade and commerce that links all of those empires you mentioned, including Mesopotamia and ties them backwards to Oetzi and the older obsidian trade, and forwards to “the City” and Wall Street.  And where trade occurs ideas are exchanged as well.

The individual sitting on the throne, the philosophy motivating the supporters, even the location of the throne changes, but throughout there is a Western continuity every bit as strong as the Chinese continuity.  Conversely, the history of the people residing in the territory claimed by the Red Dynasty, as you have referenced it in the past, is every bit as fragmented, discontinuous and tortuous as that of Europe.

Did the Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Wu, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Shun or Qing dynasty rise after they fell?  Whether ruled from the Huang He or the Yangtze, by Northeners or Southerners, by Han, Manchus or Mongols, Chinese empires and dynasties are just as fragile and transitory as Western ones.  And yet Chinese peasants and merchants survive just as their Western counterparts have and do.


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## Kirkhill (4 Sep 2010)

I know this could just as easily fit in the China thread, and it is from Time, and it is from Joe Klein - but precisely because of those reasons it caught my eye and seemed to fit into this discussion.

It is an article  about a constituency in China that selects their legislators by lot.

Now if Joe Klein can move this far off the track of believing in Government by elites perhaps there is hope.  The next step is to believing that giving people more freedom to act on their own initiative, less regulation and legislation, will result in a whole lot more innovation and less requirement for direction and policing.

Here's a rambling thought to tie all of this back into Canada's economy: if Stephen Harper wants to create a Northern Legacy for Canada he should do two things - Enshrine property rights for all Canadians, including aboriginals, and declare Nanisivik a Federal Burgh.  As a Federal Burgh it would be subject to Canadian federal law, including labour and environmental law, but it would be exempt taxes.  I am pretty sure that there would be a lot of people trying to figure out how to make themselves comfortable up there while they ran their businesses.


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## Edward Campbell (4 Sep 2010)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> ...
> Did the Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Wu, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Shun or Qing dynasty rise after they fell?  Whether ruled from the Huang He or the Yangtze, by Northeners or Southerners, by Han, Manchus or Mongols, Chinese empires and dynasties are just as fragile and transitory as Western ones.  And yet Chinese peasants and merchants survive just as their Western counterparts have and do.




The Chinese, from the Shang onwards, were _essentially_ Chinese - even when the rulers were from the North. They were as Chinese, whether Tang or Ming or Qing, as the English were English, whether Lancaster or York or Tudor, Stuart, Orange or Hanoverian.


Edit: typo


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## Edward Campbell (4 Sep 2010)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> I know this could just as easily fit in the China thread, and it is from Time, and it is from Joe Klein - but precisely because of those reasons it caught my eye and seemed to fit into this discussion.
> 
> It is an article  about a constituency in China that selects their legislators by lot.
> 
> ...




There are interesting, public, debates going on in China, today, about _democracy_ or, at least some forms of - perhaps inside the party, perhaps at local levels, perhaps by some form of polling. The new dynasty, this capitalist dynasty, needs to find ways to measure the _consent_ of the governed but they fear and mistrust popular elections.


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## Kirkhill (4 Sep 2010)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> The Chinese, from the Shang onwards, were _essentially_ Chinese - even when the rules were from the North. They were as Chinese, whether Tang or Ming or Qing, as the English were English, whether Lancaster or York or Tudor, Stuart, Orange or Hanoverian.



I accept that.  I also accept that there is an English, Scottish, and German character.  I also think there is a Skanian, Mercian, Provencale and Florentine character. But isn't it equally valid to discuss an essential Europeanness, as dysfunctional, nationalistic and "democratic" as that might be?  And I say that as no fan of the EU.  

I believe that the HRE and the Dukes of Burgundy had a better grip on the European character and how to manage Europe, ie with a light hand, than the centralizing tendency of the Carolingians.  

I guess I am just having difficulty coming to grips with the notion that one billion of anything can be reliably expected to act in a consistently predictable fashion.


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## a_majoor (5 Sep 2010)

This draws us back to "culture", and especially Edward's very interesting notions of liberal democractic society, illiberal democratic society and conservative society (roughly America, Europe and Asia [I hope I havn't mangled your arguments too much here]).

America, as a fully realized liberal democracy, can generate responses to new challenges and situations which would strain other societies or even trigger collapse. The EU, and to a lesser extent Canada are far less liberal, and thus less responsive to challenges. Conservative societies have different ways of dealing with challenges (mostly because what constitutes a challenge to a conservative society is defined differently from a challenge in a liberal or illiberal society).

As far as continuity is concerned, both Samuel Huntington and Victor Davis Hanson believe in a continuous line of culture for the West (the only main difference is VDH sees it as being essentially unbroken since the time of the classical _polis_ while Huntington sees the West as the successor civilization to the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome.


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## a_majoor (14 Sep 2010)

Interesting reversal of the demographic decline trope, although since the source of the anticipated growth isn't internal, the inference is the Canada of the 2030's will little resemble the Canada we live in today. I had thought that immigration of large numbers of Americans in the late 2020's looking to fill the high income jobs we cannot fill in Canada would cause Canada to evolve towards a limited Republican form of government, but if the demographic surge comes from other sources, then they will be bringing their assumptions and cultural bias  as well:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/09/canada-forecast-to-have-more.html#more



> *Canada forecast to have more immigration and possibly 47 million people in 2036*
> 
> Canada is projecting faster population growth because of more immigration than they have projected in the past. Previously Canada was projecting 39.4 million people in 2035 but now they are projecting a medium assumption forecast of 43.5 million in 2035. There will be many updated national population counts and new population forecasts starting from the end of 2010 and through 2011 and 2012 as the census results from 2010 are tabulated for different countries.
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (10 Oct 2010)

I posted this under the US economy thread as well, but the same principles can be used in Canada, and probably with greater success given our much smaller debt load in both relative and absolute terms:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/can-we-privatize-the-national-debt/?singlepage=true



> *Can We Privatize the National Debt?*
> South Carolina's Jim Pratt, running against James Clyburn, is proposing such a plan.
> October 10, 2010 - by Adakin Valorem
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (10 Oct 2010)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> I posted this under the US economy thread as well, but the same principles can be used in Canada, and probably with greater success given our much smaller debt load in both relative and absolute terms:
> 
> http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/can-we-privatize-the-national-debt/?singlepage=true




The federal government has been trying to do this for the past three years but there is a huge, albeit quite uninformed, public backlash - led by the NDP which abhors _private_ property.

There is a good, sound, but not universally 'accepted' argument for leasing over buying - the principle is that capital is then free to buy things that cannot be leased while leasing costs are just continuously ongoing O&M. The counter, of course, is that 'we' are just giving our money, for ever and ever, in rent/leasing fees to the rich, evil blood sucking capitalists who most Canadians, simultaneously, hate and envy.

It is not beyond the rational to imagine that we _could_ lease assets like warships, tanks and jet fighters. The life cycle costs of lease vs. buy _should_ be roughly the same - system by system - if the deals are well negotiated.


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## Oldgateboatdriver (10 Oct 2010)

I'll go one better than ERC.

New-Brunswick tried only a year ago to sell off NB Power to Hydro-Quebec: It would have wipped NB Power's debt, the whole provincial debt of New-Brunswick AND reduced the power rates of people served by NB Power!

The backlash (including irrational coniption of the premier of Nfld & Lab who just can't get over being told by all the courts in Canada "A contract is a contract") was so severe in the province they had to back off the plan within days of its announcement.

We were not talking about evil bloodsucking capitalists here, just evil blood sucking Quebecers  .


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## George Wallace (10 Oct 2010)

Perhaps New Brunswickers saw it as "Saving a buck today, only to have to pay a hundred tomorrow."   Perhaps people are starting to wake up to this trend in Canadian bureaucracy to "lets cut here and save a nickle and then realize that it costs one hundred times that to maintain down the road".


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## a_majoor (12 Oct 2010)

The ultimate beauty of the scheme is that once an asset is in private hands, the "save a dollar today, pay x tomorrow" is now in the hands of the market. If customers are no longer willing to purchase the good or service at price x, then either a competitor will move into the market with the product or service at a price consumers will pay, the vendor will make adjustments to bring costs and prices down, or peope will realize they can go without.

So long as property, goods and services are in the hands of a govenrment monopoly, the market forces are not allowed to work, and we end up with absurd situations like former Ontario Hydro going bilions of dollars into debt because their mandate was to sell electricity "at cost", without anyone but them defining what "at cost" ment. Ontario ratepayers are working off a $36 billion dollar stranded debt from Ontario Hydro, over and above the absurd "flow in" charges for expensive and unreliable "green energy" and US power form Ohio Valley coal plants to cover the crater in supply that has been created. (yes, the Americans are filling in following market princiles, but we the consumers and taxpayers are limited in where we can go to meet our demand for energy).

However, the opposition to private property, the unfettered use of property and putting assets on the market to realize their value for the taxpayer only delays the inevitable. When the time comes and there are no other options, the assets wil go for fire sale prices and taxpayers will realize only a small fraction of the value (and still be stuck with the debts).


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## GAP (12 Nov 2010)

How U.S. debt battle helps Harper Tories
Bruce Anderson Globe and Mail  Thursday, November 11, 2010 
Article Link

This week's release of the ideas of President Barack Obama’s hand-picked advisers, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, on combating the U.S. debt, kicked off a debate that will rage south of the border for months, possibly for years. It will have subtle but important reverberations for politics in Canada, too.

By now, there are few Americans left who are sanguine about their country’s mountain of debt, or the pace at which it is growing. The bipartisan report tabled Wednesday startled observers who may have been expecting a more tentative set of ideas: the authors advocate extensive cuts in politically sensitive programs including Social Security. The report also waded into some of the choppiest water of American politics, calling for increased tax revenue as well.

Here in Canada, Ottawa’s record-setting deficit has been something of a non-event in terms of public opinion. One reason for that is how much Canadians have been hearing about how bad other countries have it. Canadians are convinced that our economic woes are mostly a hangover that resulted from an economic binge in the United States, and that we are far from alone in feeling the effects.

The idea that governments should pump money into the economy was largely uncontroversial because everyone in the world seemed to be doing it. And now, the size of Canada’s deficit is being evaluated by voters in the same context. Compared to the dramatic choices facing Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, Canadians may feel they have little reason to stay awake at night. Massive spending cuts in Britain and divisive social policy adjustments in France offer even more reasons for Canadians to temper their complaints about our circumstances.

And now, America, long seen by Canadians as the foundation stone of economic growth in our country, is looking to correct a $4-trillion imbalance in the next nine years.
More on link


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## Edward Campbell (10 Dec 2010)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Ottawa Citizen_ is an interesting take on Canada/US relations:
> 
> http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Take+advantage+Obama+effect/2018400/story.html
> 
> ...




This story, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ is, *despite the anti-government spin*, hopeful. It is 'good news:'

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-crafts-plan-to-ward-off-criticism-over-us-border-deal/article1832420/singlepage/#articlecontent 


> Ottawa crafts plan to ward off criticism over U.S. border deal
> 
> STEVEN CHASE
> 
> ...




We need to think back to the 1988 Liberal election ad that aimed to frighten Canadians into rejecting the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement by showing the Canada-US border being erased. That, essentially, is what we *need* to do. Our North American border should face the outside world. We, Americans and Canadians (*not Mexicans*) are about 97.5% of the way along the “no border” path for goods (things) and, at a guess, 85% along the path for services and 75% for people. The remaining hurdles are neither huge nor especially difficult but some will be controversial.

John Manley asks the right question, as he often does: *”what do we get at the border in exchange for greater co-ordination on security?”* We must make a net gain on 'our' wish list or we must walk away.

What the government appears to (finally) comprehend is that Americans have decided, amongst themselves, that security trumps trade – in fact it trumps everything. If we cannot help with *their* security concerns – no matter how ill-considered some may _appear_ – then we cannot expect them to help with out trade concerns. If we offer them what they want for security then they will reciprocate. But this is not classic, early 20th century _reciprocity_ – tariff for tariff, and so on, this is a new type of trade-off

Now, we do need to be cautious in dealing wit5h the USA. It is proposed that we will hand over sensitive personal information to the same folks who are, 99.99% responsible for the _Wikileaks_ fiasco. Assange didn't steal the United States' information – Americans, _official_ Americans failed to secure it. The US government is, generally, a blind, stumbling, not very bright behemoth that, time and again, shoots itself – and its friends and neighbours – in the foot.

But, by and large, the programme outlined in the above article makes sense and Canadians need to support it as a matter of “enlightened self interest.”


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## Edward Campbell (10 Dec 2010)

Two more pieces, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, re: the _how_ and _why_ of ”thinning” the Canada-US border:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/a-thinning-border-but-no-continental-big-bang/article1832639/ 


> A thinning border – but no continental Big Bang
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> 
> ...




We really should aim for the “Big Bang” but I'm sure Ibbitson is correct and the government, facing a HUGE, ill-informed backlash from timid Canadians – just look at the Comments in the _Globe_ – will do it piecemeal, avoiding parliament, as far as possible.

 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/how-canadas-share-of-the-vast-us-market-is-eroding/article1832511/ 


> How Canada’s share of the vast U.S. market is eroding
> 
> MICHAEL BABAD | Columnist profile | E-mail
> 
> ...




Now some Army.ca _regulars_ will note that I'm the guy who keeps says, “look West!” to Asia for our trade future. That's true, and we should, but not before cementing our hold on our closest, safe, nearly _domestic_ market in the USA. The decline – debasement, in my opinion – of the greenback makes it even harder to sell into the USA – our goods and services are, now, 1.4% more expensive just because of the US dollar's weakness. Now is the time to secure our place, on favourable terms, in the US market.


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## The Bread Guy (10 Dec 2010)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> .... John Manley asks the right question, as he often does: *”what do we get at the border in exchange for greater co-ordination on security?”* We must make a net gain on 'our' wish list or we must walk away ....


Given the cost (to people crossing the border, especially those using it regularly) of "walking away", what's your read on the odds that Canada will end up with doing what's asked, and getting very little in exchange?


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## Edward Campbell (10 Dec 2010)

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Given the cost (to people crossing the border, especially those using it regularly) of "walking away", what's your read on the odds that Canada will end up with doing what's asked, and getting very little in exchange?




Sadly, I think the odds are very "good," but the Conservatives just _might_ have the balls to reject a bad deal and then crow about it, burnishing their _nationalist_ credentials just a wee bit.


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## The Bread Guy (10 Dec 2010)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Sadly, I think the odds are very "good," but the Conservatives just _might_ have the balls to reject a bad deal and then crow about it, burnishing their _nationalist_ credentials just a wee bit.


I hope for the last bit, too - let's hope the "sell" brings enough Canadians on board (given how much counter-sell to expect).


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## The Bread Guy (10 Dec 2010)

milnews.ca said:
			
		

> I hope for the last bit, too - let's hope the "sell" brings enough Canadians on board (given how much counter-sell to expect).


Like this:


> .... Maybe panic, paranoia, and intelligence and security powers unfettered by the rule of law (such as the super-secret, imaginary police powers recently on display in Toronto) are what Canadians need to protect our society ....


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## Edward Campbell (17 Dec 2010)

I can usually find lots of reasons to disagree with the _Globe's_ Jeffrey Simpson, but this column, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is spot on:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/the-parochialism-of-little-canada-is-killing-us/article1841323/ 


> The parochialism of Little Canada is killing us
> 
> JEFFREY SIMPSON
> From Friday's Globe and Mail
> ...




He's right; the problem is not just Québec – although it is a significant drain on Canada in every possible respect and, as Simpson says, French speaking Québecers are, _grosso modo_, already socio-culturally _independent_ even as they remain firmly attached to the Canadian financial teat. 

But what's the answer? Force Québec's hand; make Québecers, finally, choose on an issue that, firmly and clearly, pits their French Québecois _nature_ against continued access to Canada's money? Further assert federal constitutional *rights* in areas that are, properly, provincial? Further decentralize – making  Canada into a supranational _union_ with (largely) sovereign members some, à la the European Union, weak and some strong and some in the middle? And, if any of those answers are practical possibilities, how?


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## Brad Sallows (17 Dec 2010)

>There’s no “one size fits all” definition of Big Canada in such a sprawling, diverse country.

Simpson pretty much refutes his worry right there.  Canada is geographically large, and consequently regionally diverse.  The cost of having too much "Big Canada" is not having enough resources (ie. money) left to deal with distinct and different needs around the country.  Devolution of authority and power to set and address priorities at lower levels is a good thing, unless one believes that the point of some people is to be the means to the ends of other people.

I understand his particular gripes, financial regulation and Newfoundland's plight.  If a federal solution is an enviable one, I expect provinces will gradually all or mostly sign on.  But when you pick one solution and you make a balls-up out of it, there's a tendency for the solution's champions to defend the hill while there are no functioning alternatives to assess.  And Newfoundland's main problem is that Quebec, like Ontario, is one province rather than half a dozen (or, conversely, that Atlantic Canada is four provinces rather than one).


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## Kirkhill (18 Dec 2010)

“Give me a place to stand on, and I can move the earth” said Archimedes about his lever.  And Jeffrey Simpson.

Simpson perceives the place to stand, Ottawa, and has no doubt about the need to create a strong lever in the form of federal powers.  The problem though, is that he is not trying to move a unitary earth.  He is trying to move a mountain of gravel.  As Brad and Edward point out, there is no unity there, no internal cohesion.  Still less is there is a desire amongst the parts to be moved and no desire to be moved by an agent of one of the other parts.

It is not that "big things" can't be done.  It is that everybody wants to be the ......er and not the ......ee.


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## a_majoor (18 Dec 2010)

A limited Federal Republic, such as the United States, or a Federal State like Germany or the Swiss Confederation may be a much better model of how Canada should be constituted so the parts are in balance and can function effectively.

Getting there will be the interesting question....


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## a_majoor (19 Dec 2010)

A matter of culture. We had a culture willing to take on big projects from building the CPR to ensure Confederation to about 1975 with the building of the CN tower. A new culture exists, and we need to find the best parts of it and run with them in order to stay ahead:

http://blogs.forbes.com/mikemalone/2010/12/16/why-cant-we-do-big-things-anymore/



> Michael S. Malone
> SILICON DREAMS
> *Why Can’t We Do Big Things Anymore?*
> Dec. 16 2010 - 5:15 pm | 3,353 views | 0 recommendations | 18 comments
> ...


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## a_majoor (22 Dec 2010)

While I am working on a business start up, I am coming to appreciate the effects of "compliance" here in Ontario. Canada isn't too different from what is being described here, and the effects are the same:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/compliance-the-word-that-sunk-a-million-u-s-jobs/?singlepage=true



> *‘Compliance’: The Word That Sunk a Million U.S. Jobs*
> Costs not related to the quality of the end product — costs created entirely by overbearing government — have destroyed our manufacturing sector.
> December 22, 2010 - by Jeff Pope
> 
> ...


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## foresterab (23 Dec 2010)

> While I am working on a business start up, I am coming to appreciate the effects of "compliance" here in Ontario. Canada isn't too different from what is being described here, and the effects are the same:
> 
> http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/compliance-the-word-that-sunk-a-million-u-s-jobs/?singlepage=true



When I worked for a lumber company in British Columbia several years ago this was a big topic as the Forest Practices Code had just came into effect a couple of years before.  That one piece of legislation meant basically 4 additional full time staff positions were required to deliver the same amount of wood to the mill...

4 x $67,000 salary + employer costs = roughly $402,000 in labour costs that had to be covered off somehow...plus office spaces, vehicles etc..

Put another way that was about $0.33 per cubic meter of wood harvested.  In 2003 (1) BC had an annual allowable cut of 75 million meters = roughly 25 million dollars just in direct industry costs passed on consumers.

Since 2003 to 2008 Annual allowable cuts have dropped in BC on average 8% (2) plus many facilities have closed permanently due to low market prices.  Although legislation has changed during this time reducing the more clumbersome legislation requirements many facilities that are operating still struggle to break even meaning cash is not there to invest in the plants to increase labour productivity.  Big circle that only gets worse when exporting product to the US and a strong Canadian dollar exists.

Anyways..ramble off but a Canadian example of this occuring for you.


(1) http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hts/pubs/jubilee_ubc.pdf
(2) http://www.bioenergyconference.org/docs/speakers/2008/Karidio_BioEn08.pdf


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## Edward Campbell (26 Jan 2011)

Good, indeed GREAT news in this item, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/canada-one-of-the-freest-markets-at-last/article1882624/


> Canada, one of the freest (markets) at last
> 
> NEIL REYNOLDS
> Globe and Mail Update
> ...




Prime Minister Harper _may_ have steered Canada away from the Trudeau era; it remains to be seen if he and subsequent “helmsmen” can stay on the “right” course.


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## a_majoor (5 Feb 2011)

One interesting issue is credentialism vs education. I'm sure we have all met or worked with credentialed people (i.e. having degrees or other advanced designations) who were essentially dumb as a post, but in positions of authority due to their credentials. If we as a society were to shed our attachment to credentials, then lots of unused potential could be unleashed as bright people were promoted due to ability. As a thought experiment, what if part of the hiring process was to have candidates do a battery of SAT and aptitude tests to determine their real abilities?

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/01/uncredentialed-wonder



> *Uncredentialed Wonder*
> Jan 25, 2011
> Elizabeth Scalia
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (5 Feb 2011)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> One interesting issue is credentialism vs education. I'm sure we have all met or worked with credentialed people (i.e. having degrees or other advanced designations) who were essentially dumb as a post, but in positions of authority due to their credentials. If we as a society were to shed our attachment to credentials, then lots of unused potential could be unleashed as bright people were promoted due to ability. As a thought experiment, what if part of the hiring process was to have candidates do a battery of SAT and aptitude tests to determine their real abilities?
> 
> http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/01/uncredentialed-wonder




A very dangerous proposition. Do you really want to drive, day after day, on a bridge that built by a gal who was not a PEng? Or fly in a plane piloted by a guy without a current licence? Sometimes credentials matter; we have learned that the hard way.


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## Brad Sallows (5 Feb 2011)

Credentials (certifications of competence) matter in technical endeavours, but not so much in politics and governance.


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## Edward Campbell (5 Feb 2011)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Credentials (certifications of competence) matter in technical endeavours, but not so much in politics and governance.




Agreed completely; in politics and governance we *wish* for men and women who are honest and smart and driven by duty, in e.g. engineering and medicine we *need* qualifications - certified ones, at that.


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## Kat Stevens (6 Feb 2011)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> A very dangerous proposition. Do you really want to drive, day after day, on a bridge that built by a gal who was not a PEng? Or fly in a plane piloted by a guy without a current licence? Sometimes credentials matter; we have learned that the hard way.



Tacoma Narrows bridge was designed by an engineer... look how well that turned out!


----------



## a_majoor (6 Feb 2011)

Credentials are a quick means of verifying that someone has been "hard assessed" in various fields, so are (or should be) important for things where the hard assess is based on unchanging metrics (science, engineering, medicine and so on). When the "hard assess" is for something like "gender studies", then we are dealing with very squishy metrics, and assigning a level of confidence in the holder of the credential based on very little real evidence. A qualifying SAT battery would likely favour an engineering student and disqualify a gender studies graduate.....

Once again using Internet shorthand gets my foot stuck in my mouth. My excuse is I'm _not credentialed_!  ;D


----------



## Dennis Ruhl (6 Feb 2011)

Kat Stevens said:
			
		

> Tacoma Narrows bridge was designed by an engineer... look how well that turned out!



I hope it wasn't the same guy who designed the floating bridge in Seattle that didn't.  Talk about a career going down the toilet.  Maybe he moonlighted on the Second Narrows bridge an hour or two away.  Credentials indicate only a minimum of competence.  In a political situation they are often hired by people with no competence in the subject so reliance on credentials becomes paramount.


----------



## Antoine (10 Feb 2011)

The latest McNaughton-Vanier Round Table is not related directly to economic but could contribute to "make Canada relevant again". 

Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie had interesting points that he brought up.



> McNaughton-Vanier Round Table
> On January 19th, 2011, the First McNaughton-Vanier Round Table on Government Decision Support was held in Ottawa. Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie (Chief of Transformation, Canadian Forces), Peter Schmidt (political scientist from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin) and Franklyn Griffiths (professor emeritus, Political Science, University of Toronto) discussed the ways in which academic support might improve government decision making.



www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&pagetype=vod&hl=e&clipID=5008


----------



## a_majoor (27 Feb 2011)

This has to be fixed, and fast:

http://redensign.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/canadian-provincial-debt-vol-i/



> *Canadian Provincial Debt Vol I*
> Posted: February 26, 2011 by ezbeatz in Uncategorized
> Tags: Debt, Provinces 0
> Canadian Provincial Deficits for 2009/2010 & 2010/2011.
> ...


----------



## larry Strong (27 Feb 2011)

The economy of Quebec is among the largest in the world ranked the 44th largest just behind Norway. Quebec is also ranked the 21st largest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The economy of Quebec represents 19.9% of total GDP of Canada........Quebec gets $8 billion a year in transfer payments.........yet they are as far in debt as Alberta is! 

I guess that goes to show where the welfare state gets you.


----------



## Jed (27 Feb 2011)

It looks like the stubble jumpers from Saskatchewan are carrying the rest of the Canadian provincial freeloaders.


----------



## a_majoor (7 Apr 2011)

A more meta look at things; is our civilization's foundation based on a bubble?

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-our-civilization-a-bubble-part-i/



> *Is Our Civilization a Bubble? Part I*
> 
> Posted By Stephen Balch On April 7, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Health Care,Money,US News,economy | 24 Comments
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (20 Apr 2011)

Another union goes down in flames:

http://canofcontemplation.blogspot.com/2011/04/union-boss-gives-up-on-his-members.html



> *Union Boss Gives Up On His Members*
> 
> To use an UFC analogy, the head of TCEU Local 416 Mark Ferguson, the union that does garbage collection in Toronto, has found himself in a triangular choke hold and has basically tapped out to even trying to save his members' jobs...because he apparently doesn't know how.
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (24 Apr 2011)

Personal responsibility, taxes and debt:

http://www.technicalbard.com/archives/765



> *On Taxation and Affordability*
> Apr 23rd, 2011 by Taliesyn in Business, Economics, Education, Politics
> 
> Two items in the news/blogosphere over the last week caught my attention and triggered a thought in my mind.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (25 Apr 2011)

Fun with numbers:

http://www.barrelstrength.com/2011/04/25/the-bloc-is-innumerate/



> *The Bloc is innumerate*
> April 25, 2011 8:27 am Dalwhinnie Canadian Politics
> 
> The Bloc Quebecois is insisting the federal government give to Quebec the tax points that Quebec deserves. Unfortunately for the Bloc, this is less than it actually receives.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (12 May 2011)

Canada's demographic situation is in some senses even worse than that of the United States; are there lessons here for us?:

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/  May 12 2011



> DEMOGRAPHY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: Tyler Cowen links to this study on shifting demographics of a society in relation to financial market returns, and cautiously suggests there might be something to it.  I agree perhaps there is.  But strikingly, it is precisely what I’ve been turning over in my mind since reading Tyler Cowen’s fine, short essay, The Great Stagnation: How We Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit.  I think, actually, it should have been subtitled, How We Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit and After That All the Next Generation’s Seed Corn.
> 
> The essay suggests that we’ve already absorbed the easy gains that more or less follow on the genuinely history changing Industrial Revolution, and that incremental gains are much tougher to come by, unless we are fortunate enough to find some new scientific or technological breakthrough of a kind that is difficult to predict, let alone will into being. (I’m simplifying and perhaps editorializing.) Even as I read it, however, my reaction was that it did not take into account – in multiple directions – the effect of an aging population.  Which is what the cited paper attempts to do.  Aging populations take less risk, innovate less, make fewer breakthroughs in new technology, consume more but not necessarily in ways that produce increases to the general standard of living.  And when the aging generation has political power from numbers, they tend to think in terms of themselves – and call it social justice.  Insofar as they have not produced lots of new children, they are less invested in the future after themselves, and are perfectly willing to eat the next generation’s seed corn.
> 
> ...


----------



## GR66 (12 May 2011)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Canada's demographic situation is in some senses even worse than that of the United States; are there lessons here for us?:
> 
> http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/  May 12 2011



Perhaps the standard current economic model of attempting to counter an aging population through immigration is only helping to reinforce such stagnation.  As long as the older portion of the population remains in control of the majority of the capital (as well as remaining in the leadership positions in industry) while at the same time there remains just enough young labour to continue "business as usual" there is no major incentive for innovation.

Necessity is the mother of invention as they say and perhaps allowing the economy to become increasingly reliant on a smaller and smaller portion of the workforce would _force_ the economy (and government) to become more efficient and innovative.  

I'm not sure there is a real world example we can look at to see the possible effects of such a policy decision.  Japan might offer some insights since they are certainly world leaders in many areas of technological and industrial innovation but despite that their economy still remains stagnant.  However their rigid social structures, general lack of natural resources and "room to grow" might make their situation much different than what Canada (or the US) might face.


----------



## mariomike (12 May 2011)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Another union goes down in flames:


"Union Boss Gives Up On His Members:
"To use an UFC analogy, the head of TCEU* Local 416 Mark Ferguson, the union that does garbage collection in Toronto, has found himself in a triangular choke hold and has basically tapped out to even trying to save his members' jobs...because he apparently doesn't know how.":
http://canofcontemplation.blogspot.com/2011/04/union-boss-gives-up-on-his-members.html





* Toronto Civic Employees Union. TCEU has "done" EMS in Toronto since 1933. Mark Ferguson himself is a Paramedic, and the elected President of TCEU.
We tried to go our own way,  but the only way out is death or retirement. 

I do not expect to see TCEU go "down in flames" anytime soon. But, I see their wages and benefits joining the "race to the bottom". The loss of the sick bank for new hires is an example of that. That was a benefit they negotiated over 50 years ago.
I expect soon to see a knight in red shining armour ride to the "rescue" of Mark and his fellow Paramedics. On the other hand, the Grim Reaper also rode a horse.  ;D

Driver-Loaders ( garbagemen ), if their jobs get contracted out, will likely be taken over by Teamsters.  That is what happened in Etobicoke in 1994.
"Satisfaction Guaranteed or Double Your Garbage Back!"

From the angry ( smelly ) summer of 2009,
"Is Mark Ferguson the most hated man in Toronto?":
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/668198


----------



## mariomike (14 May 2011)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Another union goes down in flames:
> http://canofcontemplation.blogspot.com/2011/04/union-boss-gives-up-on-his-members.html



Reply to add.
As mentioned in my previous post, the last TCEU strike was in 2009. It was over workers banking our unused sick days and cashing them out upon retirement ( as I did ). The union won. The new sick plan will only apply to future hires.

When the contract expires at the end of this year, the battle will be over the so called "jobs for life" - with no decrease in pay, seniority or benefits - guarantee. It will dramatically elevate the risk of a lockout or strike.
“We’re going to have the same situation as (the strike in 2009), but instead of being about banking sick days, it’s going to be about whether people have jobs or not. We thought it was nasty last time? This time you’re going to have private collectors trying to cross the lines of picketers whose jobs are on the line.":
David Doorey, professor of employment and labour law at York University.

"Jobs for life" goes back to 1999: “Mayor Mel Lastman closed one of the biggest deals of his political life early yesterday when he confounded his critics and averted a strike by civic workers. Job security through the life of the contract for employees with 10 years seniority.”
In 1999 Metro was preoccupied with surviving amalgamation, not contracting out jobs.
In 2002, "Jobs for life" was the cause of the first strike in 30 years: "The province called them back. We tried to take it away from them because they had us by the balls." Mayor Mel Lastman.
It was World Youth Day, and the Pope was coming to Toronto:
http://www.ewtn.com/wyd2002/news_articles/wyd_numbers.htm
TCEU won the ruling on job security during arbitration.

In 2005, "Jobs for life" was again signed into the contract by Mayor Miller. He improved it. This time, it protected all TCEU members, _regardless of seniority_.

Prior to 2002, the last strike was in 1972. That year, TCEU voted to take Metro Ambulance - their "atomic bomb" - out with them. It lasted 30 days, and took three weeks to clean up the garbage ( mega overtime ). I hired on three months later. The public was still seething at us, and I do not blame them. It was the last, and to the best of my knowledge, first ambulance strike in Toronto.

TCEU was established in 1917. Things may have changed since I retired, but not as much as that blogger wants his/her readers to believe. Paramedics are not likely to be contracted out, but as other TCEU workers are forced into a race to the bottom, paramedics may find themselves riding high on a sinking ship. It may become more and more difficult for them to simply maintain, let alone improve, their standard of living.

"Toronto strike's possible link to man's death under probe":
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2009/07/16/paramedics-strike.html
( Some understandably angry comments from irate citizens. ) 

"A request to adjourn the Hearst inquest was granted to the Toronto Civic Employees Union, Local 416-CUPE, a party with standing.":
http://news.ontario.ca/mcscs/en/2010/04/inquest-into-the-death-of-james-hearst-postponed.html

My guess is that is one inquest that is not going to happen anytime soon, if ever.  :worms: 

We ran into "I pay your salary - I hate your union - I don't have it, so neither should you" types on the job.
Having a union of our own - like Toronto Police and Toronto Fire - will likely never happen.


----------



## a_majoor (2 Jun 2011)

Canada better get its house in order quickly:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-canadian-writer-to-his-american-readers/?singlepage=true



> *A Canadian Writer to His American Readers*
> We are too profoundly aligned for Canadians to think of themselves as immune to the American malady.
> June 2, 2011 - 12:01 am - by David Solway
> Print Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (15 Jun 2011)

A veiw of the Martin spending cuts. Tax increases and offloading to provinces was also a feature of the period, but the essential lesson of spending cuts needs to be driven home to you MP regardless of where you live:

http://www.oxygentax.com/2011/06/paul-martin-guide-to-cutting-deficits.html



> *The Paul Martin Guide to Cutting Deficits *
> 
> The Paul Martin Guide to Cutting Deficits: FCPP - Frontier Centre for Public Policy
> 
> ...



http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/3788



> *The Paul Martin Guide to Cutting Deficits*
> Jesse Kline, National Post, May 31, 2011
> 
> Last week, the U.S. government hit its debt ceiling of $14.3-trillion -the legal limit on the amount of money the government can borrow. While the Treasury Department is using a number of accounting tricks to give lawmakers until early August to resolve the situation, both Republicans and Democrats agree that America's fiscal situation is fundamentally unsustainable.
> ...


----------



## Brad Sallows (15 Jun 2011)

I read that article a while back.  Those seeking to learn lessons from Canada's fiscal management never seem to get past the Paul Martin "Miracle".  Canada established a federal operating surplus in 1987 and retained it until the 2008 recession; the US isn't even close to being able to do so.  The cost of servicing debt peaked in the very early 1980s and fell steadily thereafter (causing major reductions in the federal deficit which was entirely a function of the cost of servicing debt with the operating balance in surplus); the cost of servicing debt has essentially no room to fall further at present.  Revenue growth outpaced spending growth for several years prior to the cuts and after; revenue cratered with the onset of the recession and is not recovering rapidly, let alone at a rate to outpace spending growth in the US.  In short, factors external to Paul Martin and Jean Chretien first lowered the deficit to within pistol shot, and none of those factors is present to assist the US.  Also, it wasn't the federal government that had to manage the hard work of cutting spending: the feds mostly cut transfers and left the former recipients to work out the details.  It would surprise me greatly if the US Congress found the political will to gut transfers.

The US is screwed, but roughly half the nation hasn't the backbone to deal with the situation even if their ideology would permit them to do so.  One of Sun Tzu's suggestions is to do the hard things while they are still easy.  Neither Obama nor the US Congress has much strategic aptitude; collectively, they are weak thinkers.


----------



## a_majoor (23 Jun 2011)

Well, here is a way to eliminate @ 50% of the deficit on an ongoing basis, without "sacrificing" any of our so called public services:

http://www.oxygentax.com/2011/06/private-public-wage-disparities.html



> *Private-Public Wage Disparities *
> Private-Public Wage Disparities: FCPP - Frontier Centre for Public Policy
> 
> According to a CFIB 2008 study, taxpayers would save $19-billion a year if publicsector wages were equalized with private-sector ones. And that only includes those civil servants with direct private sector equivalents -in other words, no police, firefighters, etc. were included.
> ...



http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/3807



> *Private-Public Wage Disparities*Howard Levitt, National Post, June 22, 2011
> 
> Years ago, I told my sister once people realized how much they were paying public servants such as her, there would be a full scale revolt. Factoring in the short work days, thrice annual long vacations, professional development days, retirement at age 55, and wildly generous pensions, no one of comparable education makes nearly as much on an hourly basis.
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (20 Jul 2011)

In Canada, this is known as the "Alberta Advantage":

http://volokh.com/2011/07/19/foot-voting-for-freedom/



> *Foot Voting for Freedom*
> 
> Ilya Somin • July 19, 2011 10:31 pm
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (25 Jul 2011)

The Anglosphere of the past, compare and copntrast with the situation today:

http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2011/07/24/the-anglosphere-before-the-lights-went-out/?print=1



> *The Anglosphere, Before the Lights Went Out*
> 
> Posted By Ed Driscoll On July 24, 2011 @ 11:00 pm In Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal,Liberal Fascism,The Future and its Enemies,The Memory Hole,War And Anti-War | 3 Comments
> 
> ...



and an interesting idea from the comments:



> Buck O'Fama
> In 1989 as the Iron Curtain fell, it was often remarked how the event was actually and finally the END of the great war that started in 1914. This made some sense: the treaty of Versailles settled nothing but set the stage for WWII. The 1917 Russian Revolution, brought about in large part by the Germans for tactical advantage, helped divide the world between two armed camps for nearly a half century after WWII’s end.
> 
> But perhaps there is one more effect, little attributed to WWI but which certainly came about in response to events caused in some part by it: the rise of the welfare state. Starting with Russia in the 1920s and in the US in the 30s and 40s, welfare states expanded almost unabated until the Soviet one collapsed in the early 1990s. Ours and Europes, began somewhat later, have persisted until now. But as they shake and shudder under their own dead weight, perhaps the final end of the 1914 era is about to arrive.


----------



## foresterab (28 Jul 2011)

Taken from the Globe and Mail
http://gold.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GI/20110728/escenic_2113186/stocks/news/&back_url=yes



> Productivity lag pinned on self-employed Canadians
> 15:42 EST Thursday, Jul 28, 2011
> 
> It is an enduring economic conundrum: Why does Canada chronically lag the United States in productivity?
> ...



A different take on the productivity arguments that have been around but the article does not provide enough insight as to how to correct this situation.


----------



## Edward Campbell (28 Jul 2011)

foresterab said:
			
		

> Taken from the Globe and Mail
> http://gold.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GI/20110728/escenic_2113186/stocks/news/&back_url=yes
> 
> A different take on the productivity arguments that have been around but the article does not provide enough insight as to how to correct this situation.




You cannot, and I think, do not want to "correct" for that. The small, unincorporated, enterprise, while unproductive in statistical terms, is still an important contributor to a growing economy.

The good news is that when you take that sector out of the equation the productivity gap "virtually disappears," but I am a bit skeptical. Our industrial/manufacturing sectors is, I believe, still less productive than is that in the USA - our major competitor. We need to do better. It is *not* about workers - ours and theirs are, almost certainly, identical in skill and knowledge; we do have some advantages, including health care; but our industrial/manufacturing leadership is, in my opinion, more timid, less willing to innovate and too afraid to invest in e.g. technology than are their American counterparts. In my opinion that is where the productivity gap exists: the corner office.


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## Kirkhill (28 Jul 2011)

A higher proportion of "unproductive" self-employed could also be seen in terms of the high volumes of layoffs in the 90s.  

Canadian "unemployed" became "self-employed" "consultants" - speaking from experience  ;D

Did the Yanks lay-off as many people from corporate positions?
How many of them went on the dole, dropped off the radar, or opted for self-employment?

Maybe Canadians are Less inclined to be Wage Slaves and More inclined to be entrepreneurial after all.


----------



## foresterab (28 Jul 2011)

> A higher proportion of "unproductive" self-employed could also be seen in terms of the high volumes of layoffs in the 90s.
> 
> Canadian "unemployed" became "self-employed" "consultants" - speaking from experience
> 
> ...



I would be interested in seeing the productivity numbers for New Zealand vs Canada due to the layoffs in the public sector New Zealand experienced at about the same period and the well documented shift of public sector jobs to self employed.  The other challenge is the I doubt the US productivity numbers include the large number of migrant workers/illegal immigrants that apparently have a large impact on the southern states distorting the US numbers.

Personally I believe the disconnect is not so much on the self-employed numbers or those who work for the large corporations but lack of mid sized growth companies expanding based upon innovation, investment and new designs...but that's my two cents worth and I've got no idea on how to improve the situation without inefficient government protection.


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## a_majoor (31 Jul 2011)

Progressives everywhere should be shouting with joy:

http://torydrroy.blogspot.com/2011/07/tories-cut-corporate-welfare.html



> *Tories cut corporate welfare!!!*
> 
> I object to corporate welfare. The stare has no business picking winners and losers in business. Giving money to corporate behemoths like Suncor is a joke. This is a good first attempt to remove some of the billions HM Canadian Government hands out of our money. We need to cut all of it!! We should also continue to lower corporate tax rates and reduce capital gains taxes.
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (7 Aug 2011)

The rest of Canada should take note:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/streetwise/sp-upgrades-saskatchewan-on-low-debt-burden/article2033171/



> May 24, 2011
> *S&P upgrades Saskatchewan on low debt burden*
> By TIM KILADZE
> From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
> ...



The question ultimatly comes down to what sort of economic climate and culture the State is promoting; Saskatchewan was governed for decades by the NDP and had much diminised economic performance compared to Alberta, despite having a similar basket of resources. The Saskatchewan Party instituted a series of tax cuts and regulatory reform, with the results noted above.


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## a_majoor (13 Aug 2011)

Terrance Corcan on how Canada solved the deficit problem and debunking the "must increase taxation" myth:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/08/12/terence-corcoran-canada’s-gst-myth/



> *Terence Corcoran: Canada’s GST myth*
> 
> Terence Corcoran  Aug 12, 2011 – 10:03 PM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## Brad Sallows (18 Aug 2011)

As with nearly all commentators on the subject, Corcoran missed the real story.

1995 year-over-year spending growth: -1.93%.
1995 y-o-y revenue growth: 7.24%

1996 (the year of the big cut): -7.88% and 6.87%
1997: 3.11% and 7.32%

See what the revenue growth was doing?

Also, debt charges as % of debt were running at 8-9% vice the 10-14% of the 3 to 20 years prior.

The numbers bounce around from year-to-year, but the lesson is simple enough: with debt costs no longer through the roof, all that was necessary was to restrain spending growth to about 3% or less (in dollar terms) y-o-y.


The Yanks are screwed because they have no immediate likelihood of healthy revenue growth and no sign of basic restraint in spending growth.


----------



## a_majoor (30 Aug 2011)

The Ghost of F.A. Hayek rises again:

http://mises.org/daily/5567/Hayeks-Ghost-Haunts-the-World



> *Hayek's Ghost Haunts the World*
> 
> Did you ever have the feeling that we've been through this before?
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (11 Sep 2011)

History bypasses me! 

I predicted on one thread that Canada would evolve into a Limited Republic in the 2040's as more and more Americans came to the Great White North seeking the high paying jobs that would be open due to our demographic bust (coupled with the lower standard of living Americans would be facing cleaning up the collapse of Progressivism) starting in the 2020's. At some point enough Americans would be living and working in Canada that they would put considerable political, economic and cultural pressure on our institutions.

Well, the start date isn't the 2020's, it is now...

http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/090811_canada_jobs/americans-flee-north-border-jobs/



> *Americans flee north of the border for jobs*
> For many, Canada is the land of opportunity
> 
> Posted Sep 8, 2011, 8:24 am
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (21 Sep 2011)

Niall Ferguson on why the West became prosperous and the rest of the world did not:

http://freedomnation.blogspot.com/2011/09/niall-ferguson-6-killer-apps-for.html


----------



## Jed (21 Sep 2011)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Niall Ferguson on why the West became prosperous and the rest of the world did not:
> 
> http://freedomnation.blogspot.com/2011/09/niall-ferguson-6-killer-apps-for.html



Excellent post! I especially appreciate the 6th app, work ethic or individual productivity. To me the power / inflence of our unions are so counter productive and they keep dragging down everyone to the lowest common denominator; much the same as the various communistic systems and leftist party attitudes seem to do around the world.

Sheesh I sound like a right wing Red Neck!  ;D


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse (21 Sep 2011)

Jed said:
			
		

> Excellent post! I especially appreciate the 6th app, work ethic or individual productivity. To me the power / inflence of our unions are so counter productive and they keep dragging down everyone to the lowest common denominator



Well I happen to belong to OPSEU, one of the more influential of the unions, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the lowest common denominator........


----------



## Jed (21 Sep 2011)

I guess my personal experience has been with other Unions then. Obviously my viewpoint is pretty biased. I know many good productive and effective people within Unions. It seems to me that sooner or later the Union hierarchy seems to form an intermediate level of supervision/management that detracts from the organization's main objectives and decreases the individual output contribution to the team. Human nature is to individually conserve energy so most people want to do less and achieve more. Some people call that lazy and some call it being personally productive.  ;D


----------



## mariomike (21 Sep 2011)

Jed said:
			
		

> To me the power / inflence of our unions are so counter productive and they keep dragging down everyone to the lowest common denominator;



I became a member of TCEU when I was 18. It was, and is, a closed shop. I appreciate what our elected reps negotiated for the profession. If we deserve it or not would depend on your point of view.


----------



## a_majoor (22 Sep 2011)

Work ethic is both individual (are you willing to put in the required effort) as well as collective. While some unions and union shops may discourage individual initiative and productivity (you hear the occasional horror stories from the UK where workers are censured by their union reps for working too hard and making everyone else look bad) this is hardly a universal thing.


----------



## a_majoor (24 Sep 2011)

While I hardly agree with the conclusions of the books authour, it is very refreshing to see that the economic histoy ofthe 20th century is being looked at, and the Austria School is finally getting some serious scholarly attention and a wider audience:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/09/23/peter-foster-grand-pursuit-grand-delusion/



> *Peter Foster: Grand pursuit, grand delusion*
> 
> Peter Foster  Sep 23, 2011 – 6:31 PM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (1 Oct 2011)

How personal and capital mobility enhances freedom. Even seemingly marginal changes have huge impacts:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/09/30/william-watson-u-s-created-trudeau/



> *William Watson: U.S. created Trudeau*
> 
> William Watson  Sep 30, 2011 – 10:29 PM ET | Last Updated: Sep 30, 2011 10:41 PM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (7 Oct 2011)

A eulogy that could have come from Ayn Rand:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279321/jobs-agenda-kevin-d-williamson



> *A Jobs Agenda*
> October 5, 2011 8:44 P.M.
> By Kevin D. Williamson
> 
> ...



Steve Jobs RIP


----------



## a_majoor (11 Oct 2011)

More rarefied proof that Keynesian economics does not work (if the "Stimulus" wasn't proof enough):

http://american.com/archive/2011/october/the-end-of-comfortable-keynesianism



> *The End of Comfortable Keynesianism*
> By Philip I. Levy
> Tuesday, October 11, 2011
> 
> ...


----------



## foresterab (25 Oct 2011)

http://gold.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GI/20111025/escenic_2212436/stocks/news/&back_url=yes

Canadian salaries seen rising, despite global economic woes
TAVIA GRANT
05:30 EST Tuesday, Oct 25, 2011
  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Most Canadian workers will still see higher salaries next year, despite a rocky global economy – but pay hikes won’t return to the pre-recession heyday.

Employees will get average salary increases of 3.1 per cent in 2012, the Conference Board of Canada said in its compensation outlook to be released Tuesday.

The projected average non-unionized base pay increase is slightly higher than the gains in 2010 and 2011, at 2.7 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively. But it’s well short of 2008 levels, when increases averaged 4.2 per cent.

An “uncertain economic climate” is making employers cautious about hefty raises, the report said.

“Canadian organizations remain optimistic, but guarded, in the midst of a turbulent global outlook and higher-than-normal economic risk,” said Karla Thorpe, director of leadership and human resources research.

Saskatchewan is expected to lead the pack. Employers in the province see increases of 3.9 per cent, while Alberta is next at 3.6 per cent. Ontario and Atlantic Canada are expected to have the lowest base pay increases, at 2.7 per cent next year.

Among sectors, the oil and gas industry has the highest projected increases, at 4.3 per cent, followed by natural resources. The lowest increases are expected in retail trade, at 2.4 per cent.

Increases in the private sector will likely outstrip public-sector pay hikes. The average projected increase in the private sector is 3.2 per cent compared with 2.6 per cent for public sector workers.

Unionized staff will see lower increases. Anticipated wage increases for unionized employees are projected to be 2 per cent next year – 1.5 per cent in the public sector and 2.3 per cent in the private sector.

The results are based on responses of 381 organizations to a survey conducted this summer.

Almost a quarter, or 23 per cent of compensation planners, expect their work force will expand next year, while just 6 per cent see reductions.


I found this an interesting take given the union talk in here.  It's something that we struggle with alot here in Alberta where public service members take a pay cut, in some cases very significant, to work instead of going to private oil patch work.  The other issue is that inflation numbers used in negotiations are usually matched to provincial averages inflation instead of local inflation so purchasing power varies.  You don't need many years of 1-2% pay raise differences to really feel the accumulated impact.

All that being said I've worked in both union and non-union shops and prefer non-union.  You are held more accountable to your obligations and I've found people seem to be more responsive to change.

Anyways, another take on the ongonig discussion,
foresterab


----------



## Brad Sallows (26 Oct 2011)

Egad.  Where can I get a piece of that action?


----------



## a_majoor (31 Oct 2011)

I want everyone to note the numbers for Mike Harris very carefully, so the next time some dumb**s claims the "Common Sense Revolution", tax cuts or Supply Side Economics didn't work I can cheerfully rub their face in it:

http://thetrustytory2.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/same-old-washed-up-liberal-lies/



> *Same old washed up Liberal lies.*
> 
> I love when Liberal blowhards come out of the woodwork and thank the Liberal Party of Canada for Canada’s “economic” position on the world stage.
> 
> ...



Just as a note. Mike Harris raised revenues by $20 billion by cutting taxes and getting the economy revved up, but he made rthe same error that Thatcher, Reagan and so many others did; they did not _reduce spending_ and plow the extra revenues into debt reduction and eventual permanent tax reduction, but rather spent the bonanza in an attempt to continue to buy votes (or had it spent for them as in the case of the United States, where a Democrat Congress used the massive increase in wealth from Reaganomics as a personal piggy bank for new pet projects. In a similar fasion, JFK ignited the Go Go 60's with his tax cuts; LBJ squandered all the new wealth (and more) with the "Great Society" and Viet Nam war).

Note 2: If Iron Mike were to become Premier *right now*, it would take a decade of $20 billion revenue increases and 0% spending growth to pay down the debt today. If Prime Minister Harper was to increase government revenues by $20 billion/year, it would take him 55+ years with 0% spending increase to take down the Federal Debt. That is the scale and scope of the problem today, so it should be crystal clear why deep spending cuts are needed in addition to tax reduction to deleverage Canada and protect us from the Global economic meltdown (AKA Greater Depression) that awaits.


----------



## Kirkhill (31 Oct 2011)

About reading history and doom.....

My take on it is that it is obvious with a generational memory of 25 years we can't remember a ruddy thing. Consequently we keep doing the same things over and over again.

Funnily enough we are still here to keep doing it over and over again....I reckon it can't be fatal.


----------



## Edward Campbell (31 Oct 2011)

Somewhere else, someone else cited George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."


----------



## Brad Sallows (31 Oct 2011)

Who cares about the past?  It is the future we are taxing when we borrow.


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## a_majoor (5 Nov 2011)

Canada is on the verge of being blindsided again. Our oii sands are being locked out of the US and European markets, and if we become the captive suppliers of the Chinese, the "Oil Superpower" chant will ring hollow. Expanding our potential lists of customers (Korea, Tiawan, Japan come to mind) is a short term step, but going after the Indian market gives us a potential major customer to offset our dependency on only China as a major market. Other possibilities (mentioned in companion pieces in the FP) include building refineries and utilizing this oil for our own domestic consumption:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/11/04/terence-corcoran-the-energy-superpower-that-isn’t/



> *Terence Corcoran: The energy superpower that isn’t*
> 
> Terence Corcoran  Nov 4, 2011 – 8:36 PM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (7 Nov 2011)

Not seizing the wealth. Not redistributing the wealth. Not taxing the wealth. EARNING the wealth (and creating new wealth in the process):

http://inspiringyoutothink.blogspot.com/2011/11/heres-how-i-help-close-income-gapand.html



> *Here's How I Help Close The Income Gap...And The Left?*
> 
> US wealth gap between young and old is widest ever
> 
> ...



Of course it is easy to break the virtuous circle in may ways, imposing taxes and regulations that increase the cost of the employee reduces the value to the employer, who needs to generate something on the order of $200,000/employee to be profitable and successful, rather than treading water. IF the employee's cost to the employer is raised, then the amount of sales would have to go up pretty drastically, or cost cutting will need to be imposed (and what is the greatest single expense?)


----------



## a_majoor (16 Nov 2011)

This is very relevant for Canada, we see the same symptoms in Ontario and Quebec, despite its abundant natural resources and educated population is far behind the rest of Canada in terms of economic growth. Comparing BC to Alberta or looking at Saskatchewan before and after the Saskatchewan Party are other indicators. People do make rational choices:

http://warlocketx.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/america-has-gotten-lazy/



> America Has Gotten Lazy
> 
> 14 November 2011 in Definitions and clarifications, Topical
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (18 Nov 2011)

Lessons from Europe that apply everywhere (forward this to Dalton McGuinty...)

http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/five-lessons-for-america-from-the-european-fiscal-crisis/



> *Five Lessons for America from the European Fiscal Crisis*
> 
> November 17, 2011 by Dan Mitchell
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (27 Nov 2011)

Lord Black on the disintigration of Quebec Separatism. The destruction of the National Socialist BQ is an outcome that was highly desirable, but the economic and political cost was certainly quite high. I suppose the opportunity costs of various other possible outcomes may have been even higher:

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/bought%2BQuebec/5771308/story.html



> *How we bought off Quebec*
> 
> Conrad Black, National Post · Nov. 26, 2011 | Last Updated: Nov. 26, 2011 5:06 AM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (8 Dec 2011)

Some structural changes that can be made:

http://www.transparencyrevolution.com/2011/12/renaissance-and-recovery/



> *Renaissance and Recovery*
> Posted on December 6, 2011 by Phil
> 
> We have written a lot lately about the dismal economy and the prospects for recovery. Where might recovery originate? How can we get there? In his new book, Launching the Innovation Renaissance: a New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast, Alex Tabarrok argues that the currently stagnant job market can and will turn around when our economy once again begins to focus on innovation
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (8 Dec 2011)

See my comments in "Grand Strategy for ~."

Alex Tabarrok is enunciating a _grand strategic_ 'vision' that is properly grounded in America's history, geography, economic and culture. It is, essentially, a _soft power_ proposition. Some of the salient points look remarkably like what China is doing right now.

Soft power can work *only* when there is commensurate _*hard* power_ supporting it. The _hard power_ need not be used very often, but it must, *always* be there and everyone, friend, foe and competitor alike, must know that it can and will be used. This was the key error in the Trudeau/Axworthy _soft power_ initiatives: neither understood _soft power_ nor how to apply it, they just disliked and mistrusted nationalism and _hard power_ and wanted something, anything else. Thus they ruined our (Canada's) _hard power_ capabilities without getting anything at all in return - what a waste.

Bill Clinton and George W Bush, on the other hand, understood _hard power_ and used it, albeit by flailing about somewhat aimlessly at all and sundry, but neither understood _soft power_ so both squandered America's wealth and power and gained SFA in return.

Tabarrok's ideas can work if, and it's a big Big *IF*, America can get its domestic political and economic house in order - ordering America's house will, *without a doubt*, in my opinion, require large (in the order of 25%) cuts to the Pentagon's budgets (my guess is that a 25% cut in budget could lead to a 5% cut in capabilities if waste and corruption, by which I mean real fraud and political pork barreling, are cut instead of ships and units).


----------



## a_majoor (8 Dec 2011)

In this case I was looking at the article as inspiration for how the economic underpinnings of Western nations like Canada could be improved.

Hard and soft power requires resources, so anything that we can do to expand the economy and place more resources in the hands of the citizens translates to more resources available to for both hard and soft power (both in scale and scope). It is also much easier to execute your grand strategy when you intelligently manage your resources, I have used historic examples in the past to demonstrate how cultures that support individual freedom, free markets, property rights and the rule of law do better than those that do not. (In relative terms, the "free" examples might not be Liberal Democracies, but were much freer than their opponents

Athens was able to marshal her resources and not only become the leading power of Greece, but continue to fight against the Peloponnesian League (backed by Persian money) for almost a decade after loosing the flower of her army and fleet in Sicily.

Elizabethan England had neither the manpower nor resources of Hapsburg Spain, yet was able to defend herself and continue to advance English interests during the Elizabethan Age.

The _Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta_ had similar issues yet was able to keep ahead of the Ottoman Empire and the multitude of rival Italian city states for several centuries.

The small Asian "Tiger" economies can rival the "Dragon" (China) despite a huge mismatch in size, manpower and resources.

India has transformed from a poor socialist nation to an expanding economic power after ditching the "Permit Raj", a transformation in many ways far more remarkable than China's. (On a micro scale, Saskatchewan has experienced and economic boom when the NDP was replaced by the small "c" conservative Saskatchewan Party).

While the Tigers and India are not in the business of displaying or deploying "hard" power (for now anyway), they certainly have the foundation with which to build both hard and soft power tools and use them if desired.

For Canada, if each province could produce an average of $3 billion/year more in revenue for the Federal government, then the deficit would be pretty much eliminated without any spending cuts at all (and politically it seems that meaningful spending cuts are just as toxic to Stephen Harper as to any previous Prime Minister). So structural changes to unleash more economic activity will have downstream benefits as well.


----------



## a_majoor (9 Dec 2011)

Pissing away our tax dollars: Ontario spends and incredible $27.7 billion in subsidies to for profit business. The Government of Canada spends that amount for the entire nation (and you know how I feel about that!).

"Since the early 1990s, Ontario governments of every partisan stripe have used tax dollars to subsidize private for-profit businesses. For anyone who paid income tax in 2008, the cost of corporate welfare was $424 per Ontarian (or $848 per dual-income couple)."

So that's $848 that I don't have to spend on my family, or invest in a compay that I deem fit, or put away for my retirement, fund car repairs, spend on medical expenses etc. The ongoing cases of crony capitalism in the US (and the way the Ontario Liberals have run their "Green Energy" program) doesn't do much to convince me that I am simply being forced to pay for politcal favours to supporters of the Ontario Liberal Party either.

Read more here:

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploadedFiles/fraser-ca/Content/research-news/research/publications/ontarios-corporate-welfare-bill-27-billion.pdf


----------



## Edward Campbell (14 Dec 2011)

*This*, a recent speech by Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, is relevant to the topic at hand - it is about how Canada can, indeed must, survive the lean years ahead which are the result of many years of muddled economic and social _politics_ in America and Europe. We, Canadians, were part of the muddle - that began in the 1980s (see Chart 1 in Governor Carney's presentation, page 2).

Prime Minister Mulroney "set the table" for deficit reduction by balancing the "operating" budget (i.e. the Government of Canada took in more in revenue than it spent of programmes) but he was afraid to tackle the deficit and debt, but he "spread the alarm" and warned Canadians about the dangers of debt. Prime Minister Chrétien, helped by the _Wall Street Journal_ which (in 1995) dubbed our dollar the "Northern Peso," took the unpopular actions necessary to slay the deficit dragon. Other countries should have followed suit; too few did.

Now we are in a near global crisis. Governor Carney's prescription for surviving the crisis and being "relevant" in the world is on pages 10 and 11. But it is a prescription that requires Canadians to do something for and about themselves and their own, personal finances so that they can survive the changes which will happen around and to them. I doubt most canadians have the "smarts" to do as he says.


----------



## a_majoor (16 Dec 2011)

Putting a fork in Keynes by following the argument to its logical conclusion. Of course the more serious issue is this is also the conclusion that arises from classical economics as well:

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/12/wages_must_fall.html



> *"Wages Must Fall!": What All Good Keynesians Should Say*
> Bryan Caplan
> 
> When Keynesians want to gloat, they often point to the overwhelming empirical evidence in favor of nominal wage rigidity.  For the latest example, see Krugman on the Irish labor market.  Their unemployment is 14.5%, but the nominal wage index has only fallen by about 2.5%.  Krugman's conclusion:
> ...



Of course wages are "sticky" because people don't want to give up what they already have, so the answer in the 20th century has been to reduce wages through inflation, which has pretty huge negative consequences of its own. Places where there is a degree of wage flexibility, such as "Right to work" states have shown better outcomes in terms of employment and job creation.

Two places where "stickyness" is an issue are government unions, who will be very disruptive if forced to take wage and benefit reductions (although this is inevitable given the deficit and debt situation; the other alternative is to fire them and contract out non essential jobs to lower paid non union workers, or drop these jobs altogether); and people dependent on government aid (not just welfare, but subsidies and other government handouts). These people are generally well organized 1% groups who have been able to manipulate the government and public for decades, and will fight to the last taxpayer to keep the gravy flowing.


----------



## Kirkhill (16 Dec 2011)

Another way in which "keynesian's" have reduced wages in fact is through the imposition of reduced working hours: vis the 35 hour work week in France and much of the rest of Europe.

Of course your average Euro worker didn't squawk too much as many of the goods and services that he couldn't buy, due to the lack of income, were dosed out directly from Colbert.  His family didn't suffer.  

Unfortunately Colbert couldn't collect enough taxes from an FDH populace (Fat, Dumb and Happy) so he had to go out and borrow money from those nasty Saxon brothers of his who had sided with the Angles and migrated to the first of many offshore taxhavens.  Eventually those bills came due and Colbert suddenly found himself unable to continue borrowing money due to a lack of lenders.  

All of a sudden his FDH (and idle) populace, staring the prospect of 10 Euro wine in the face, looked a whole lot less FDH.

As I noted on the thread on Global Economy I have come to better appreciate the value of the flexibility inherent in a Fiat currency, ultimately an IOU based economy grounded in trust.  The Gold Standard, like today's Euro, or the 1990's idea of adopting the US Dollar in place of the Canadian Dollar, would force that kind of wage disruption that the article addresses.

And if a 65 cent dollar stressed society, imagine the effect if 35% of the labour force were unemployed, or everyone's pay packet were cut by 35 per cent.  Although it can be argued that that is exactly what happened based on the external economy the impact on GDP was not nearly as great because of the internal economy.

Our Government is not charged merely with Economic Good Governance but also with maintaining Peace and Order.  And by comparison to Greece, Italy and France I would suggest that in the worst days of Jean-Claude Parrot and the Scots Git that preceded him, our government(s) have done a better job than most at operating within the Upper and Lower Control Limits.


----------



## Edward Campbell (22 Dec 2011)

I am sure the _Supremes_ got it right - Supreme Court rejects Ottawa's bid for national securities regulator: the federal proposal to centralize securities regulation in one, _national_ office is unconstitutional. I am also sure that the _Fathers of Confederation_ and the constitution writers in London, _circa_ 1867, got it wrong. I do not argue that provinces should not be strong and I believe it is right and proper to invite Ottawa to "butt out" of matters of provincial jurisdiction but the _national_ economy is, constitutionally, muddled and _muddle_ is not good policy. Ottawa should play a major role in promoting and policing the economic union, which is impaired by provincial non-tariff barriers, restrictions on labour mobility and patchwork regulations. A national securities regulator would have been an important first step toward creating a sea-to-sea regulatory environment watched over by the federal government. But my guess is that it is not to be and I also guess that the provinces will, eventually suffere for that as securities trading gravitates, more and more, to one, single exchange, the TSX, so that corporations need deal with only one regulator: the OSC (Ontario Securities Commission).


----------



## Infanteer (22 Dec 2011)

The article is a tad misleading as the court did not reject the idea outright - the Supreme Court gave the Federal Government enough wiggle room to produce some legislation regarding national securities regulation providing it recognizes the constitutional responsibilities of the provinces.


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## Edward Campbell (22 Dec 2011)

Infanteer said:
			
		

> The article is a tad misleading as the court did not reject the idea outright - the Supreme Court gave the Federal Government enough wiggle room to produce some legislation regarding national securities regulation providing it recognizes the constitutional responsibilities of the provinces.




Yes, but, Finance Minister Flaherty says, "We have the decision and we will respect it. It is clear we cannot proceed with this legislation ... We will review the decision carefully and act in accordance with it.”

Maybe there is a wee tiny bit of wiggle room there but my guess is that the Conservatives will let the markets do it all for them.


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## GAP (22 Dec 2011)

I don't see this issue the Cons are prepared to fall on their sword over.....like ER says...the markets will put paid to it.


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## a_majoor (24 Dec 2011)

Why Quebec is not an economic superpower: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWzbEn-aXMQ&feature=player_embedded

(In case the linkmis taken down, we see a public service union employee driving a snowplow down a sidewalk on a clear day, with absolutely 0 snow anywhere to be seen....).

Your tax dollars at work.


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## Sythen (25 Dec 2011)

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20111224/donations-national-debnt-111224/



> Would you donate to pay down national debt? Some do



More on link. Can you imagine of all the things you could donate to? lol


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## cphansen (25 Dec 2011)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Why Quebec is not an economic superpower:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWzbEn-aXMQ&feature=player_embedded
> 
> (In case the linkmis taken down, we see a public service union employee driving a snowplow down a sidewalk on a clear day, with absolutely 0 snow anywhere to be seen....).
> ...



Interesting video. You're right Dec 21, 2011 no snow to be seen, and not just one public service union employee but two of them working as a team on both sides of the street but is it really wasted money, or is someone grabbing an oportunity for a little OJT by taking the snow plow into the area which will be his primary responsibility to keep clear. This would allow him to practice on his machine and familiarize himself with the terrain while none of the terrain is obscured by snow. After all even snow plow drivers need to practice their skills and learn the terrain.


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## a_majoor (25 Dec 2011)

OJT? Perhaps, but it doesn't seem likely. Doing training could take place in the yard, and doing daily maintenance is probably a better use of time/resources. Walking the route or driving in a pickup truck to learn the route is also faster, easier, cheaper...

The wear and tear on the machine should also be considered when driving around w/o snow.


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## GAP (25 Dec 2011)

> The wear and tear on the machine should also be considered when driving around w/o snow.



and with the blades down....think of the damage that is doing to the blade edges, and to the sidewalk infrastructure....


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## cphansen (26 Dec 2011)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> OJT? Perhaps, but it doesn't seem likely. Doing training could take place in the yard, and doing daily maintenance is probably a better use of time/resources. Walking the route or driving in a pickup truck to learn the route is also faster, easier, cheaper...
> 
> The wear and tear on the machine should also be considered when driving around w/o snow.



Well training in the yard is a good start but the driver still needs to handle his machine in traffic. Driving in a pickup truck will not help the driver learn what it's like to drive on the sidewalks. And driving with the blade down is something that should only be done once in training. Unfortunately it's a little easier to learn where the problem areas are by driving the route once with the blade down.

After all, when you have 20 cm of freshly fallen snow and you have to clear the sidewalks so people can actually get around without breaking their necks, you need to know what you're doing and be able to avoid problems.

I'll stop discussing the video, I only wanted to show there could be a reasonable explanation for what was filmed.  I would like to know what was going on that morning and why two vehicles were out doing the same thing on the two sidewalks.

I used to live in Montreal and I remember how grateful I was for the snow plow operators. There was more than one storm when I almost had to abandon my car.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (26 Dec 2011)

SherH2A, it's of no use, my friend Thucydides is of a one-trick pony.
If they were non-unionized workers he would be lauding the extra training the private sector does over the public one......................


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## cphansen (26 Dec 2011)

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> SherH2A, it's of no use, my friend Thucydides is of a one-trick pony.
> If they were non-unionized workers he would be lauding the extra training the private sector does over the public one......................



But I enjoy his posts. They are well written and articulate. I do not always agree with him but, sometimes, he causes me to stop, think, examine my own premises and examine my own beliefs. That is something we all need to do periodically


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## a_majoor (26 Dec 2011)

If they were non union ones doing this I could at least fire them....


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## a_majoor (26 Dec 2011)

Back to creating more wealth:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-sees-trade-deals-as-key-to-his-political-success/article2283361/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Politics&utm_content=2283361



> *Harper sees trade deals as key to his political success*
> JOHN IBBITSON | Columnist profile | E-mail
> OTTAWA— From Monday's Globe and Mail
> Published Sunday, Dec. 25, 2011 7:25PM EST
> ...


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## a_majoor (29 Dec 2011)

An interesting look at how social media is affecting business. The point about how social media tools like "Twitter" don't always provide accurate data (Twitter "activists" can flood a channel, while ordinary customers generally don't) seems rather self explanatory (the same thing can be said about letter writers or people who call into talk radio), what is making me curious is why anyone would take posts of >140 characters seriously, since there is no way to include supporting evidence, charts, graphics, data etc. Just baldly asserting a point w/o evidence isn't a very effective means of making a point:

http://www.economist.com/node/21542154



> *Too much buzz*
> Social media provides huge opportunities, but will bring huge problems
> 
> Dec 31st 2011 | from the print edition
> ...



And of course the companies which can manage these tools most effectively will prosper the best.


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## Antoine (31 Dec 2011)

I always enjoy the Munk debate.

This one, "Be it resolved, North America faces a Japan-style era of high unemployment and slow growth", is available for free on CPAC:

http://www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&pagetype=vod&hl=e&clipID=6268



> Public Record
> 
> Munk Debate
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (31 Dec 2011)

Some Americans are starting to take note of our government's "secret agenda":

http://news.investors.com/Article/596263/201112291827/tax-cuts-give-canada-economy-a-boost.htm



> *Tax Cuts, Less-Intrusive Gov't Help Canada Soar*
> 
> Posted 12/29/2011 06:27 PM ET
> Success: Away from the low growth and high regulation of an America under Washington's thumb, our northern neighbor is economically strong. As 2011 ends, Canada has announced yet another tax cut — and will soar even more.
> ...


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## Redeye (31 Dec 2011)

Just in case anyone needs a reminder of why this all worked, it's because of the imposition of higher taxes coupled with aggressive spending cuts that happened before PM Harper took office and inherited a massive surplus. I'm not going to accuse him of doing much deliberately to fritter away that surplus (except, of course, for the two cuts to the GST which were in my opinion extremely bad policy decisions), but I'm not really ready to lay the credit for the current state of affairs solely at his feet, either.



			
				Thucydides said:
			
		

> Some Americans are starting to take note of our government's "secret agenda":
> 
> http://news.investors.com/Article/596263/201112291827/tax-cuts-give-canada-economy-a-boost.htm


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## SeaKingTacco (31 Dec 2011)

Fritter away a surplus?

You mean "return funds to the tax paying public"' right?

Or do you suppose the money was the Federal Government's in the first place?


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## dapaterson (31 Dec 2011)

Last time I looked there was no surplus - merely an ability to increase payments on accumulated debt.

I wouldn't declare a "surplus" until the debt is gone.


Imagine if Canada were debt free: that's $33B a year the government could use to cut taxes or increase services.


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## GAP (1 Jan 2012)

shhhh....you'll have all the Libs and Dippers salivating at that image.....


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## dapaterson (1 Jan 2012)

GAP said:
			
		

> shhhh....you'll have all the Libs and Dippers salivating at that image.....



...and then I'll point out that, had we kept expenditures and revenues in line, it would have happened... no thanks to St Pierre...


----------



## Edward Campbell (1 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> Just in case anyone needs a reminder of why this all worked, it's because of the imposition of higher taxes coupled with aggressive spending cuts that happened before PM Harper took office and inherited a massive surplus. I'm not going to accuse him of doing much deliberately to fritter away that surplus (except, of course, for the two cuts to the GST which were in my opinion extremely bad policy decisions), but I'm not really ready to lay the credit for the current state of affairs solely at his feet, either.




They were only "bad policy decisions" if you believe that frittering away *someone else's* money is a legitimate role for government. If, on the other hand, you believe that making it hard for politicians to fleece the population and "redistribute wealth" buy votes is good policy, then cutting the GST - making it harder for future governments to raise revenue except in a dire emergency - was excellent policy and well done PM Harper. It will be slower to grow our way out of the current deficit than to have taxed our way out if it but "Joe six pack" (about whom the left only professes to be concerned) will be better off for it. Hard nosed, fiscal conservatives are the working man's real friends - they are "do good" politicians; the silk stocking socialists of the Liberal and NDP persuasion (and there are still many in the Conservative ranks, too) are in the business of "feel good" politics.


----------



## Redeye (1 Jan 2012)

SeaKingTacco said:
			
		

> Fritter away a surplus?
> 
> You mean "return funds to the tax paying public"' right?
> 
> Or do you suppose the money was the Federal Government's in the first place?



Some balance of returning the surplus in the form of tax cuts and paying off the national debt would have been fine with me. When people want to bash ideas like Keynesianism, I can easily point out that Keynes made a point of stating that when surpluses were run they need to be used to pay off debts run during recessionary periods. To my knowledge, no government has ever done that. To dapaterson's point - the surplus was not used as it could have been. The end of the surplus, I was trying to say, was not so much the fault of any government decision as much as it was a function of a global economic catastrophe eroding the tax base. That said, the form in which the fax cuts we passed to consumers - two consumption tax cuts - was not optimal - there were better ways to accomplish the same.

To Mr Campbell's point - consumption tax cuts benefit the wealthiest generally. increases in the basic personal exemption, or lowering rates at the lowest brackets, would have put more money into the pockets of people who are more likely to spend it.


----------



## GAP (1 Jan 2012)

> To Mr Campbell's point - consumption tax cuts benefit the wealthiest generally. increases in the basic personal exemption, or lowering rates at the lowest brackets, would have put more money into the pockets of people who are more likely to spend it.



Why is it that some groups insist on "government knows best" idealology? If you want to get out of your financial group, create something, work harder or smarter, but do something other than complain "that he's got more than me, I want some of his"


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## SeaKingTacco (1 Jan 2012)

:goodpost:


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## Edward Campbell (1 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> ...
> To Mr Campbell's point - consumption tax cuts benefit the wealthiest generally. increases in the basic personal exemption, or lowering rates at the lowest brackets, would have put more money into the pockets of people who are more likely to spend it.




Actually that is 100%, totally _back asswards_. Consumption taxes are, broadly, discretionary ... for those with a high enough income. Spend a lower percentage of your income and pay an equally lower percenbtage in taxes. But the "working man" must spend nearly 100% of his income on necessities and a few "nice to haves," and since almost everything is (should be) covered by the HST/GST the "working man" gets taxed on almost every penny he earns because he spends it all. The "rich" man saves and invests a substantial part of his income - he pays HST/GST on only a relatively small percentage of it.

The GST/HST is such a cash cow precisely because most people spend most of what the earn and pay taxes on damned near everything they earn/spend ... except the rich who pay GST/HST on only a small percentage of their income.


----------



## Redeye (2 Jan 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Actually that is 100%, totally _back asswards_. Consumption taxes are, broadly, discretionary ... for those with a high enough income. Spend a lower percentage of your income and pay an equally lower percenbtage in taxes. But the "working man" must spend nearly 100% of his income on necessities and a few "nice to haves," and since almost everything is (should be) covered by the HST/GST the "working man" gets taxed on almost every penny he earns because he spends it all. The "rich" man saves and invests a substantial part of his income - he pays HST/GST on only a relatively small percentage of it.



Actually - yes - I didn't explain it right - I was on too little sleep sitting at Newark Airport without coffee - what I meant to say is that a GST cut doesn't benefit those people because most of their spending is on items which aren't GST taxable. I did the math on the maximum it could save me, and I'm not exactly low income. While I wasn't disappointed to pay less tax but I'd rather have seen that go to income tax cuts which would have put money to spend into people's pockets.


----------



## Redeye (2 Jan 2012)

GAP said:
			
		

> Why is it that some groups insist on "government knows best" idealology? If you want to get out of your financial group, create something, work harder or smarter, but do something other than complain "that he's got more than me, I want some of his"



Holy non sequitur, Batman!


----------



## a_majoor (2 Jan 2012)

Economic growth is not created by spending, but by saving and investment. 

Cutting consumption taxes (reducing the GST) had a much more direct effect for poor people, since their tax rates are already low (or even non existent); lowering GST lets them purchase more for their after tax dollars. The effect is much less pronounced the higher up the income bracket you go, people spend proportionally less on consumables as their income rises, so reducing GST helps the poor the most.

The Harper Government's lowering of business taxes and creating savings vehicles like the Tax Free Savings Accounts works the other end of the equation, freeing more monies for savings and investment in the economy, keeping our economy afloat with lower unemployment and faster growth than the United States.


----------



## Redeye (2 Jan 2012)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Economic growth is not created by spending, but by saving and investment.



Not so much. In order to grow an economy you need demand for goods and services. What's preventing any semblance of recovery in the United States is a slump in demand, people aren't buying much because they don't have much disposal income - or they worry about their future income. So they put off non-essential purchases which drags everything down. Savings do fuel capital investment, but right now there's plenty of money held by businesses that they are not investing because they don't see the demand. High savings rates, all else equal, translates generally to slower economic growth. If your statement was true, Japan with its high savings rates would be a fountain of growth. It's not.



			
				Thucydides said:
			
		

> Cutting consumption taxes (reducing the GST) had a much more direct effect for poor people, since their tax rates are already low (or even non existent); lowering GST lets them purchase more for their after tax dollars. The effect is much less pronounced the higher up the income bracket you go, people spend proportionally less on consumables as their income rises, so reducing GST helps the poor the most.



Again, no. Consider the average poor/working-class type person. What are their major expenditures? Rent/mortgage, groceries, that sort of thing. None of those are taxed by the GST. We specifically design consumption taxes to reduce the incidence of the tax on those people, by exempting those goods most commonly consumed by them. It might give a small bump to their standard of living. But not a substantial one. It sure does help people buying new cars, new houses over $400,000, and so on, and more heavily consuming goods subject to the tax. That is to say, not the poor. What does actually put more money to spend in those people's pockets is increasing the basic personal exemption or reducing tax rates on lower brackets.



			
				Thucydides said:
			
		

> The Harper Government's lowering of business taxes and creating savings vehicles like the Tax Free Savings Accounts works the other end of the equation, freeing more monies for savings and investment in the economy, keeping our economy afloat with lower unemployment and faster growth than the United States.



TFSAs were a good creation, I'm happy that was done. It does primarily benefit higher income Canadians, however, it also provides a better savings mechanism for lower income Canadians potentially than RRSPs. Introduction of the RDSP program, and enhancements to RESPs targeted at lower income families are also excellent policy moves. That said, we go back to the premise that savings do not drive economic growth nearly as significantly as demand - particularly where investment by businesses is as non-existent as it appears to be in the US economy in particular.


----------



## PuckChaser (2 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> Again, no. Consider the average poor/working-class type person. What are their major expenditures? Rent/mortgage, groceries, that sort of thing. None of those are taxed by the GST.
> 
> That said, we go back to the premise that savings do not drive economic growth nearly as significantly as demand



What a better way to increase demand then to lower the tax rate on purchasing items? You're contradicting yourself. If savings doesn't grow demand, then targetted tax cuts are the way to help put money into people's pockets who will want to spend it. I don't know if you've bought groceries lately, but I'm spending 25-30 dollars every 2 weeks on HST. Only things like milk/bread/butter (staples) are not taxed. Everything else is hit hard, especially if you have tax-spend Liberals running your province like I have in Ontario, who introduce a HST during an economic crisis, driving down demand even further.


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## brihard (2 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> TFSAs were a good creation, I'm happy that was done. It does primarily benefit higher income Canadians, however, it also provides a better savings mechanism for lower income Canadians potentially than RRSPs. Introduction of the RDSP program, and enhancements to RESPs targeted at lower income families are also excellent policy moves. That said, we go back to the premise that savings do not drive economic growth nearly as significantly as demand - particularly where investment by businesses is as non-existent as it appears to be in the US economy in particular.



I love the damned thing- my circumstances have been basically ideal for the TFSA. Cl A reservist, working Cl B every summer, full time student. Between my second and third years of school I did a year of Cl C workup training (Sept 07-Sept 08) and a six month deployment (Sept 08 - Mar 09.) Then back to Cl B in the summer adn school during the year full time. Al my income while overseas was tax free, so my actual taxable income was lower. Deductions out the hoop for my education amounts and my rent, my scholarships weren't taxable... So I had the money and then some to contribute to long term savings, but my marginal tax rate was very low due to the chronology of and geography of my income, and my time in school. The tax savings of an RRSP contributions would have only been in the 21-22% range, and sure as hell I'll be in a higher tax bracket than that later down the road. And, looking at things as long term as I am, my TFSA is exclusively loaded with the intent of realizing capital gains (yes, I realize they're only taxed at 50% marginal outside of a registered vehicle).

For someone at my age with the income to contribute and no debt, the TFSA is almost too good to be true- yet it is.


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## aesop081 (2 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> None of those are taxed by the GST.



Groceries are not taxed by the GST ??

I better tell every grocery store around then........


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## Redeye (2 Jan 2012)

CDN Aviator said:
			
		

> Groceries are not taxed by the GST ??
> 
> I better tell every grocery store around then........



No, they're not. 

Take a look at a grocery receipt some time. You'll note that with some exceptions (mainly processed foods) which are specifically noted on your receipt, basic foodstuffs are not subject to GST.

The rules aren't exactly clear to the average reader, but they're here: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/gm/4-3/4-3-e.html#_Toc155586103

Most basic grocery items consumed by an average family would be zero-rated - that is, not taxed.


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## aesop081 (2 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> (mainly processed foods)



Which i suspect is a large part of what the lower-end income bracket buys as it tends to be relatively cheap.

So, yes, the lower-end bracket's groceries are being taxed by the GST/HST and cutting said tax is money in their pockets.


I know what its like to be poor. Do you ?


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## a_majoor (2 Jan 2012)

So the proposition is that spending drives the economy.

Observations

1. the Democrat Congress boosted spending dramatically starting in 2006, yet this failed to halt or slow the 2008 economic crash

2. An $800 billion stimulus was passed to prevent unemployment from rising to more than 8%. It is currently at @ 11% once various unemployed groups that have been removed from the statistics are added back in.

3. Clinton era welfare reform in the United States has been undone and more money, food stamps and other support flow to the population than at any time in history. Economic activity is still depressed.

4. The US debt rose $4 trillion dollars in the last three years, a spending spree that dwarfs the savings of individuals, business and industry. If spending theory is correct, then the economy should be growing at a rapid rate.

5. The Canadian government has limited the amount of "stimulus" spending and is working to bring its books into balance. The results are in stark contrast to those of the United States (or Europe, for that matter). A comment was made about Japans savings rate, Japan's current account surplus is $194 billion, so I don't think they have a lot to worry about in that regard. Reviewing the economic data seems to show the Lost Decade was just that, once the bad loans and overvalued real estate was worked out of the system things began to work again in the 2000's. A good article in the Atlantic is here

So the proposition has not been demonstrated with over $4 trillion in spending distributed over government, industry and individuals.


----------



## Redeye (3 Jan 2012)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> What a better way to increase demand then to lower the tax rate on purchasing items? You're contradicting yourself. If savings doesn't grow demand, then targetted tax cuts are the way to help put money into people's pockets who will want to spend it. I don't know if you've bought groceries lately, but I'm spending 25-30 dollars every 2 weeks on HST. Only things like milk/bread/butter (staples) are not taxed. Everything else is hit hard, especially if you have tax-spend Liberals running your province like I have in Ontario, who introduce a HST during an economic crisis, driving down demand even further.



Except that small tax cuts don't really seem to do that - it didn't work when Bush did it, and when the GST was cut twice, there was no appreciable change in spending. That said, the folks at the lower end of the scale, who've really held back on spending might have been spurred to spend a bit by seeing their disposable income increase in the form of an income tax cut. I'd rather see the same amount of tax cuts dispersed in that way because the benefit is the same to all in that manner.


----------



## PuckChaser (3 Jan 2012)

So you take that 2% cut off the GST and apply it to the lowest tax bracket. You've given them $900 a year, or $34 bucks a paycheque. What do they do with it? The minute they go and try to buy anything other than the groceries you mentioned above that cash is gone. Canadian household debt-loads are higher than ever before, even with a 2% GST cut. Now add 2% to their mortgages and car payments and tell them its ok, we gave you an extra $34 every 2 weeks.


----------



## Redeye (3 Jan 2012)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> So you take that 2% cut off the GST and apply it to the lowest tax bracket. You've given them $900 a year, or $34 bucks a paycheque. What do they do with it? The minute they go and try to buy anything other than the groceries you mentioned above that cash is gone.



So you're trying to argue that the tax cut is irrelevant regardless? Well, that's a weird way to look at it. By the way, to have gotten a $900 benefit out of the GST cut, you'd need to spend $45,000 per year on GST taxable goods and services. That's pretty damned difficult to do, even for me, and I'm by no means in the lowest tax bracket.



			
				PuckChaser said:
			
		

> Canadian household debt-loads are higher than ever before, even with a 2% GST cut. Now add 2% to their mortgages and car payments and tell them its ok, we gave you an extra $34 every 2 weeks.



Mortgages have nothing to do with the GST - unless you've bought a new house worth more the $400,000 - and then there's even rebates. Housing, like basic groceries, is mostly GST exempt. Funny enough, what you've describe sort of sounds like the CPC's explanation of how they handled childcare. "Quit whining, we gave you $100 a month to pay for daycare. (that costs, as I understand it far, far more than that)"


----------



## aesop081 (3 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> the CPC's explanation of how they handled childcare. "Quit whining, we gave you $100 a month to pay for daycare. (that costs, as I understand it far, far more than that)"



Which is exactly how it should have been handled. The only better way would Have been to say "F**k you pay for your own childcare".


----------



## Redeye (3 Jan 2012)

CDN Aviator said:
			
		

> Which is exactly how it should have been handled. The only better way would Have been to say "F**k you pay for your own childcare".



I don't disagree - the proposal for massive national daycare programs would have been chaotic. They did help bump Quebec's birthrate for a while, but only for a while. But the $100 benefit's more of a joke than anything.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (4 Jan 2012)

I'll take 100 bucks.......


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## PuckChaser (4 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> Mortgages have nothing to do with the GST - unless you've bought a new house worth more the $400,000 - and then there's even rebates. Housing, like basic groceries, is mostly GST exempt. Funny enough, what you've describe sort of sounds like the CPC's explanation of how they handled childcare. "Quit whining, we gave you $100 a month to pay for daycare. (that costs, as I understand it far, far more than that)"



So we cut personal income taxes from the lowest tax bracket by a small margin and pay for a multi-billion dollar daycare program in a time where every government office is trying to find 10% cuts? Where is your money coming from to fund it?


----------



## Redeye (4 Jan 2012)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> So the proposition is that spending drives the economy.



CONSUMER spending. Not government spending. However, you need to find ways to spur that spending - meaning, you need to find a way to make consumers feel confident enough to spend, and make sure they have income to spend.


----------



## Redeye (4 Jan 2012)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> So we cut personal income taxes from the lowest tax bracket by a small margin and pay for a multi-billion dollar daycare program in a time where every government office is trying to find 10% cuts? Where is your money coming from to fund it?



No. We make the cut if we can afford it. And don't try to set up such a program. And don't give people a paltry handout claiming it's a solution to a perceived problem.


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## SeaKingTacco (4 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> No. We make the cut if we can afford it. And don't try to set up such a program. And don't give people a paltry handout claiming it's a solution to a perceived problem.



Or how about we just accept that it is not the role of Government to solve every (perceived) problem?


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## Edward Campbell (4 Jan 2012)

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
_*Benjamin Franklin*
US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790)_
(In "Poor Richard's Almanac")


Making us all "healthy, wealthy and wise" might, if we expand our definitions slightly, be accepted as the _productive_ roles of government.

*Healthy* includes making us safe and it, therefore, includes the national defence, police and fire services, clean water, sewage and garbage disposal and so on;

*Wealthy* includes maintaing a strong, stable currency, balanced budgets, and the _infrastructure_ we all use to go about our business roads, seaports, telecomm networks and so on; and

*Wise* includes education, above all, and R&D.

There are other, less productive, things governments do - not all of which are objectionable; there are counter-productive things that governments do - including some that might save some of the lives of e.g. drug addicts - that are objectionable. Most things that most governments do to, for and about most people are unproductive and, to the extent that they take money away from productive efforts (most of which do not involve governments), are also objectionable.

Governments are not charities. Scrooge was right.*


__________
* 'Are there no prisons?'

‘Plenty of prisons,’ said the gentleman, laying down the  pen again.’And the Union workhouses.’ demanded Scrooge. ‘Are  they still in operation?’

‘Both very busy, sir.’

‘Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,’ said Scrooge. ‘I’m very glad to hear it.’

_A Christmas Carol_
Charles Dickens


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## Redeye (4 Jan 2012)

SeaKingTacco said:
			
		

> Or how about we just accept that it is not the role of Government to solve every (perceived) problem?



Anyone who would argue that it is in in my opinion is an idiot.


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## GAP (4 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> Anyone who would argue that it is in in my opinion is an idiot.



You do realize you just called the LPC and the NDP idiots...?


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## Redeye (4 Jan 2012)

GAP said:
			
		

> You do realize you just called the LPC and the NDP idiots...?



The NDP, yes. The Liberals, not quite so much. The Conservatives often can fit the mold too, since they seem content propose injecting government into lots of places it really shouldn't belong. Mainly people's personal lives.


----------



## PuckChaser (4 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> The Conservatives often can fit the mold too, since they seem content propose injecting government into lots of places it really shouldn't belong. Mainly people's personal lives.



What? The Conservatives campaigned on making SMALLER government, and have done so by deregulating some industries and are working at removing the long gun registry. If the Liberals and NDP wielded absolute power your daily bathroom trips would be logged in a Federal government database and taxed accordingly.


----------



## Redeye (4 Jan 2012)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> What? The Conservatives campaigned on making SMALLER government, and have done so by deregulating some industries and are working at removing the long gun registry. If the Liberals and NDP wielded absolute power your daily bathroom trips would be logged in a Federal government database and taxed accordingly.



Smaller government full of people who want to reopen the debate about abortion? Who seemed (although it's been watered down I hear) bent on following failed American ideas about law and justice and the prison industry? That's not small government in my books, and it was when social conservatism started to take hold in the CPC that I stopped renewing my membership and supporting them.


----------



## PuckChaser (4 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> Smaller government full of people who want to reopen the debate about abortion? Who seemed (although it's been watered down I hear) bent on following failed American ideas about law and justice and the prison industry? That's not small government in my books, and it was when social conservatism started to take hold in the CPC that I stopped renewing my membership and supporting them.



What spoonfed Liberal party propaganda have you been reading? You sound just like a radio attack ad that failed during the last election because the CPC has no intention of opening the abortion debate as Canadians have no intention of having that opened. Its been stated numerous times. There are some social conservatives within the party that would love to do those things, however they are thankfully such a small minority that the main body of the party will not follow their direction.


----------



## Redeye (4 Jan 2012)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> What spoonfed Liberal party propaganda have you been reading? You sound just like a radio attack ad that failed during the last election because the CPC has no intention of opening the abortion debate as Canadians have no intention of having that opened. Its been stated numerous times. There are some social conservatives within the party that would love to do those things, however they are thankfully such a small minority that the main body of the party will not follow their direction.



I'll leave aside the hilarious irony of the nonsense you just spouted about taxing going to the bathroom.

Notwithstanding what the party has said, on numerous occasions, they have a number of members who'd be only too happy to do so. I was a so-called "Red Tory" who things government has no place in social issues, but it seems like they've faded. I don't have any imminent paranoia that it will change in the near term (because it would likely mean the end of the CPC's being electable), but the fringe is there, and not as small I suspect as many would like to think.


----------



## Fishbone Jones (4 Jan 2012)

Fringe or not, members or not. Harper stated in his year end interview that they would not be going there on abortion. He's the boss.

Drop that line. It's stale and you've got nowhere to stand. Go find something else.


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## Edward Campbell (4 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> Smaller government full of people who want to reopen the debate about abortion?




And so do/did a whole slew of Liberals: Tom Wappell left the HoC in 2008, but John McKay, Paul Szabo, Dan McTeague, Derek Lee, Gurbax Malhi, Alan Tonks, Lawrence MacAuley, and Jim Karygiannis were all, reliably, anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. The Liberals are not as vocal about it as the Conservatives because, generally, to be a Liberal is to be a raging hypocrite!


Edit: typo


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## dapaterson (4 Jan 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> And do di/did a whole slew of Liberals: Tom Wappell left the HoC in 2008, but John McKay, Paul Szabo, Dan McTeague, Derek Lee, Gurbax Malhi, Alan Tonks, Lawrence MacAuley, and Jim Karygiannis were all, reliably, anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. The Liberals are not as vocal about it as the Conservatives because, generally, to be a Liberal is to be a raging hypocrite!



John Baird.


Paging John Baird.


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## Infanteer (4 Jan 2012)

Is thread going to talk about economics and Canadian relevance, or is it going to compare what politicians are idiots and hypocrites.  If it sticks with the latter, it's heading for a lock.

The Staff.


----------



## Edward Campbell (5 Jan 2012)

A good commentary, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/why-canadas-corporate-tax-cuts-rate-a-collective-cheer/article2290427/


> Why Canada’s corporate tax cuts rate a collective cheer
> 
> NEIL REYNOLDS
> 
> ...




First: I have heard that Ontario might want to back away from its commitment to a 10% tax rate - based on its current ugly financial situation. That would be a mistake - good politics, given Ontario's pink, anti-corporate, tendency but bad policy.

Second: I am not convinced that all economists who oppose corporate taxes do so for (purely) ideological reasons, as Neil reynolds, suggests. In my opinion corporate taxes are wasteful and inefficient. They are, _de facto_, just a sales tax with many complex and expensive steps in between the ultimate taxpayer, you and me, and the federal and provincial coffers. Although "corporations are people" they do not pay taxes like ordinary people, like you and I. Instead they collect all their income from *real* people, like you and I again, and then, as their fiduciary duty demands, they pay their owners, you and I (if we own shares, have a mutual fund or RRSP or even belong to a pension plan), their suppliers, their employees and then the government. Eventually every red cent that a corporation gets comes from your pockets or mine; it would be more efficient to drop the corporate tax rate to *zero* and hike the HST - same money, from the same sources goes to the same people, without as many tax lawyers and accountants in the middle.

Thitd: kudos to Prime Minister Harper for doing the right thing and for doing it right.


----------



## Edward Campbell (5 Jan 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
> _*Benjamin Franklin*
> US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790)_
> (In "Poor Richard's Almanac")
> ...




Although he is an American, some of Ron Paul's prescriptions read well for Canada, too. Here is an interesting insight in to some of his views, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Time_:

http://swampland.time.com/2011/12/22/12-days-till-iowa-ron-paul-is-not-a-politician/


> Ron Paul Is Not a Politician
> 
> By JOE KLEIN | @JoeKleinTIME
> 
> ...




As Klein says, _"it’s not a bad moment to review the most basic assumptions of our public life, to question the most basic functions of government. It may well turn out that we’ve tried to do too much. It will certainly turn out that we didn’t have the Keynesian discipline to run budget surpluses when times were good to pay for the deficits when times were bad. (Paul’s hero Friedrich Hayek had a meeting of the minds with Keynes on that point after World War II.) It may be that we need a different sort of safety net for a more competitive global economy. It may be that we’re going to have to do with less."_

Regarding the existing welfare state: Paul is right in saying that the _statists_, *correctly in my view*, believe that the people cannot make provisions for their own social safety net if they are given adequate resources to do so; Paul is also right in saying that governments, as currently structured in Canada and the USA, cannot do so either. So what should we do? I'm not sure, but ...


----------



## GAP (5 Jan 2012)

In a  similiar vein.....

The seven habits of spectacularly unsuccessful executives
ERIC JACKSON Forbes.com Thursday, Jan. 05, 2012
Article Link

Part of the allure of being a CEO is the opportunity to espouse a vision. Yet, when CEOs become so enamoured of their vision, they often overlook or underestimate the difficulty of actually getting there. And when it turns out that the obstacles they casually waved aside are more troublesome than they anticipated, these CEOs have a habit of plunging full steam into the abyss. For example, when Webvan’s core business was racking up huge losses, CEO George Shaheen was busy expanding those operations at an awesome rate.

Why don’t CEOs in this situation re-evaluate their course of action, or at least hold back for a while until it becomes clearer whether their policies will work? Some feel an enormous need to be right in every important decision they make, because if they admit to being fallible, their position as CEO might seem precarious. Once a CEO admits that he or she made the wrong call, there will always be people who say the CEO wasn’t up to the job. These unrealistic expectations make it exceedingly hard for a CEO to pull back from any chosen course of action, which not surprisingly causes them to push that much harder. That’s why leaders at Iridium and Motorola kept investing billions of dollars to launch satellites even after it had become apparent that land-based cellphones were a better alternative.

Warning sign of #6: Excessive hype

Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past

Many CEOs on their way to becoming spectacularly unsuccessful accelerate their company’s decline by reverting to what they regard as tried-and-true methods. In their desire to make the most of what they regard as their core strengths, they cling to a static business model. They insist on providing a product to a market that no longer exists, or they fail to consider innovations in areas other than those that made the company successful in the past. Instead of considering a range of options that fit new circumstances, they use their own careers as the only point of reference and do the things that made them successful in the past. For example, when Jill Barad was trying to promote educational software at Mattel, she used the promotional techniques that had been effective for her when she was promoting Barbie dolls, despite the fact that software is not distributed or bought the way dolls are.

Frequently, CEOs who fall prey to this habit owe their careers to some “defining moment,” a critical decision or policy choice that resulted in their most notable success. It’s usually the one thing that they’re most known for and the thing that gets them all of their subsequent jobs. The problem is that after people have had the experience of that defining moment, if they become the CEO of a large company, they allow their defining moment to define the company as well – no matter how unrealistic it has become.

Warning sign of #7: Constantly referring to what worked in the past

The other six are just as interesting.....
More on link


----------



## a_majoor (10 Jan 2012)

Government pensions finally get put on the block. The final line in the article sums it up for the Canadians who actually foot the bill for these pensions:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/10/john-ivison-lavish-mp-pensions-on-chopping-block/



> *John Ivison: Lavish MP pensions on chopping block*
> 
> John Ivison  Jan 10, 2012 – 6:01 AM ET | Last Updated: Jan 9, 2012 8:40 PM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## GAP (10 Jan 2012)

If the GOC goes after the PS pensions and the MP's pensions, do you not think the CF and RCMP pensions are not going to be on the chopping block also?


----------



## Redeye (10 Jan 2012)

GAP said:
			
		

> If the GOC goes after the PS pensions and the MP's pensions, do you not think the CF and RCMP pensions are not going to be on the chopping block also?



Beat me to it!


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## a_majoor (10 Jan 2012)

And an opinion from the UK on how we have been managing. A refreshing change from "the world is going to end because Steven Harper is PM" meme:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100128854/o-canada-our-only-hope/



> *O Canada our only hope*
> 
> By James Delingpole World Last updated: January 10th, 2012
> 
> ...


----------



## RangerRay (11 Jan 2012)

Reminds me of when former NDP BC Premier Glen Clark declared Greenpeace to be an "Enemy of BC".  

Mind you, the main difference being that at the time (late 90s) the BC economy, forest industry and NDP poll numbers were in the tank.


----------



## a_majoor (12 Jan 2012)

Spending cuts are happening faster than predicted (although still small overall). Oddly, while spending alarmists had predicted the apocalypse if spending were to be cut, this rapid trimming seems to have had little effect on economic growth, unemployment etc.

WRT Pensions, GAP noted that military and RCMP pensions could also be on the block. One could argue this is a proper response (and given that government pensions are an unfunded liability and part of the $500 billion in unfunded liabilities, they are not as secure as you think). Don't forget all government wages and benefits are funded by taxpayers, most of whom don't have any pensions or benefits at all. It is a complex question, and finding a just solution (as opposed to a "fair" one) will be difficult:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/tories-waste-no-time-hitting-brakes-on-spending-watchdog-finds/article2298838/



> *Tories waste no time hitting brakes on spending, watchdog finds*
> 
> OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update
> Posted on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 11:44AM EST
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (12 Jan 2012)

And an interesting response in support of Resource Minister Oliver's stance against foreign interference with our economy:

http://centerforindustrialprogress.com/2012/01/10/canadas-minister-of-natural-resources-condemns-the-green-gauntlet/



> *Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Condemns The Green Gauntlet*
> January 10, 2012, by Alex Epstein No comments yet
> 
> The most important story about the American economy is the one that gets the least attention. America has enormous, incalculable, untapped potential to revolutionize its economy through industrial progress–through far greater productivity in energy production, in manufacturing, in construction, in mining, in transportation. But our industrial progress is halted by a labyrinth of so-called “green” policies–policies that have nothing to do with protecting Americans from pollution, and everything to do with protecting wilderness from Americans. At Center for Industrial Progress, we call this The Green Gauntlet.
> ...


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## RangerRay (12 Jan 2012)

The author makes some good points, but although I consider myself a conservative, I find his stance to be radical itself.

Basically, his position that any regulation or process that delays or stops resource exploitation and industrialization is bad and is a loophole for the radical environmentalists to stop projects.  While over-regulation is not a good thing (BC NDP 1990s), throwing open the doors, allowing industry to re-write statutes and regulations, and turning the province into a Monopoly board is not the answer either (BC Liberals 2000s).

With government scientists being told by government bureaucrats (with orders from 'the centre') not to oppose projects, but to find ways to "mitigate" their impacts, it is left to scientists from academia and concerned locals to voice their concern or opposition to bad projects.  This is where the foreign special interest groups pop up.  Often these groups have no one with any background in ecology, forestry or geology.  Once they get involved (since independent scientists and concerned locals have no money) the whole process turns into a circus.

The author appears to be saying that government should get out of the way and let industry do what it needs to do.  However, it's my experience that industry is incapable and/or unwilling to pay for the externalities of their activities without some big carrots and sticks held by government.


----------



## RangerRay (12 Jan 2012)

More to my point, here is an argument against the pipeline from the conservative side:

http://alexgtsakumis.com/2012/01/12/the-enbridge-pipeline-is-wrong-for-british-columbia-and-should-be-stopped-its-bad-business-for-the-environment/



> The Enbridge Pipeline is Wrong for British Columbia and Should Be Stopped: It’s Bad Business for the Environment
> 
> 
> Imagine, if you will, that it’s the spring of 2020.
> ...



I can't find much to disagree with here.


----------



## a_majoor (12 Jan 2012)

Reading the upthread post, my take is the author is saying people protecting their property rights is a far better means of dealing with potential problems that industrial or other development can cause, rather than corporations being able to write the rules or having bureaucrats from one part of government overruling bureaucrats from other parts of the government. People might be concerned about the rainforest (or a city park) in abstract, but will be pretty ferocious in defending their own property. Even the casual observation of a city park and a private garden generally demonstrates more care and attention to detail in the private garden (and the ones that are allowed to be overrun with weeds by neglect are generally purchased at a much discounted price).

That being said, Minister Oliver is still the first politician who has actually stood up and pointed out what is happening in plain language.


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## Kirkhill (12 Jan 2012)

I believe the intent of the exercise has been achieved.

The Government has put the "Foreign Money" issue on the radar.  St. David Suzuki is on notice.  

As to the merits of the pipeline - It needs to be done.  I'm agnostic with respect to the route.  I expect those whose lands and waters are put at risk to be appropriately compensated and their interests safeguarded.

Anything's possible, if cash.


----------



## GAP (12 Jan 2012)

Why that route? 

Is it because there are larger populations of tree huggers they would have to contend with on a more southerly route? 

What about further north?


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## Redeye (12 Jan 2012)

GAP said:
			
		

> Why that route?
> 
> Is it because there are larger populations of tree huggers they would have to contend with on a more southerly route?
> 
> What about further north?



I'd suspect it's an economic decision primarily.


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## Edward Campbell (12 Jan 2012)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> I believe the intent of the exercise has been achieved.
> 
> The Government has put the "Foreign Money" issue on the radar.  St. David Suzuki is on notice.
> 
> ...



 :goodpost:

I'm with the _oatmeal savage_; the pipeline is needed - notwithstanding proposals to use an Atlantic route. The route needs to be technically and economically sensible and the environment does matter - it is valuable, too.

The project is not risk free - there will be breaks and spills; good engineering can ensure that the impacts are minimal or, at least, acceptable.

I don't mind seeing the _foreign money_ issue raised and _St David_ Suzuki _et al_ put on notice, but see my signature line - everyone has a right to express their opinion. But, having a right to express an opinion does not mean that one has a right to bury opposing opinions - and that applies to governments, corporations, first nations and the _greenies_, alike.


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## Redeye (12 Jan 2012)

Interesting POV. Are the benefits being exaggerated? It does talk about how eastern Canada gets all its needs from imported oil, but I've always understood that as a function of a lack of adequate infrastructure to transport Alberta oil east, when going south is cheaper as we can hook into existing infrastructure, and the fact that it isn't efficient for production of gasoline anyhow. I don't think plowing money into building some new pipeline east within Canada is going to win much support from anywhere.

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/01/12/HughesReport/

Shared with the usual provisions:

The Northern Gateway Pipeline will explosively increase the scale of oil sands production at a level not in the national interest, says David Hughes, one of Canada's foremost energy analysts.

By tripling oil sands production rates above 2010 levels, the project will "compromise the long term energy security interests of Canadians, as well as their environmental interests," charges Hughes.

The proposed pipeline, designed to ferry bitumen to Asian markets, will also liquidate a non-renewable resource at prices that will likely seem like a bargain down the road says Hughes in a 30-page report titled "The Northern Gateway Pipeline."

The top-notch analyst also points out that Enbridge, Gateway's proponent, has made up its own oil sands growth forecasts, which it has provided to the National Energy Board to justify the project.

"Enbridge has generated its own projection of a further increased oil supply, with no methodological backup, to justify the need for its Northern Gateway project to the National Energy Board."

Hughes' damning report also posits a simple question that Canada's media routinely neglects: why does the Canadian government support a proposal to export oil to China when nearly half the country (Quebec and Atlantic Canada) is nearly 100 per cent dependent on declining or volatile reserves from the North Sea and the Middle East? (The study was funded by the author and by Forest Ethics with intervenor money for the Gateway hearing provided by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.)*

He also singles out a glaring public policy omission: Canada does not have a credible energy plan. "The absence of a National Energy Strategy, given the non-renewable nature of the majority of the energy inputs to Canadian society, represents an extreme vulnerability to the long-term security interests of Canadians."

Author's 32 years with Natural Resources Canada

Hughes is neither a radical nor a foreigner. Nor he is an environmentalist. In fact the no-nonsense geologist regards the oil sands as a strategic resource that should be developed measurably and carefully in the national interest.

His energy expertise is genuine and hard won. The rock hound worked for the Natural Resources Canada for 32 years where the senior researcher focused on analyzing coal reserves, shale gas and unconventional natural gas supplies.

The retired 61-year-old energy specialist now gives detailed and sobering talks about declining global energy supplies across the continent.

The report, which has been submitted as evidence to the National Energy Board (the author will testify at the public hearings), squarely questions the "Canadian energy superpower" rhetoric of the Harper government. Hughes says it's based entirely on the oil sands -- a low quality and environmentally high-cost source of oil.

But Canada does, however, burn super volumes of fossil fuels. Canadians now consume five times more oil than the global per capita average, says Hughes. In addition half the country depends on oil imports (780,000 barrels a day) from foreign countries. In fact, the majority of oil consumed in Quebec and Atlantic Canada comes from volatile regimes in the Middle East.

How can Canada be an energy superpower, asks Hughes, when it will become "increasingly dependent on OPEC and the vagaries of the world oil markets for what is likely to be much higher cost imported oil?"

Furthermore, Canada's highest quality energy resources are declining. "Our natural gas production peaked in 2001 and conventional oil peaked in 1973. The superpower claim is totally a statement about the tar sands," Hughes told The Tyee.

But bitumen is not light oil, cheap oil or even easy oil. It's taken 40 years of dedicated brute force and landscape destruction as well as nearly $200 billion worth of mostly foreign capital to reach marginal production levels of 1.5 million barrels a day. (See satellite images)

In the global scheme of things, that's a drop in the bucket. It's also a modest figure given that Canada now consumes 1.8 million barrels a day. (Domestic demand could grow to 2.25 million barrels by 2030).

Moreover Canada has or will soon pick the best fruit first in the oil sands, says Hughes. The mineable portions are the richest and cheapest to extract. These are the focus of nearly 90 per cent of the 26 billion barrels currently under "active development" according to the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board.

Of the remaining 143 billion barrels, 90 per cent can only be exploited by in situ methods, which are so energy wasteful and water intensive that many experts think this technology should be banned or severely limited.

According to the "growth" forecasts by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Canada could extract 3.7 million barrels a day by 2025 (the maximum recovery rate) but such haste would exhaust the 26 billion barrels "under active development" within 19 years. The Gateway Enbridge pipeline, which proposes to suck out half a million barrels a day to Asian supertankers, would accomplish that job quickly.

Three strikes against

Hughes thinks that the rapid liquidation of Canada's highest quality bitumen reserves, as proposed by Enbridge, is bad national policy for three reasons.

For starters, peak oil means the end of cheap oil. What stays in the ground will only get more valuable over time, says Hughes. Speedy liquidation means not only a revenue giveaway but exponential growth of pollution and water contamination. (Current mining waste liabilities already total more than $20-billion.)

Second, energy returns on bitumen are dropping fast, which means that industry will increasingly spend more energy to get less energy back. Right now industry secures but 5.7 barrels for every barrel of oil or its energy equivalent invested in tar sands mining operations. In contrast, the Middle East still garners superior returns of 20 to one. (According to energy expert Charles Hall, our currently oil-driven civilization requires returns of 10 to one or must face economic stagnation.)

But the steam plants, models of inefficiency and waste, win returns of 3.8 to one for in situ recovery (80 per cent of the resource). Given that the best bitumen resources with the highest energy returns are now being used up, a rapid extraction policy leaves Canadians with the dregs of the barrel as well as less energy and even bigger environmental messes, says Hughes.

Third, the Enbridge pipeline is based on a projection that accelerates liquidation of a non-renewable resource in the absence of any national policy. Hughes points out that Northern Gateway is not needed unless oil sands production is ramped up by more than three-fold over 2010 levels. Enbridge bases its Northern Gateway proposal on the assumption that oil sands production can be tripled in less than 25 years. (Remember it took 40 years to reach 1.5 million barrels.)

The Enbridge forecast, which was an extension of CAPP's most optimistic forecast of tar sands development filed in its application to NEB, has no documented methodological basis. This was confirmed in an email to Hughes from CAPP.

It stated: "The extension is not from CAPP. Looks like someone has done the extension without our cooperation. In other words, we can't comment on the methodology."

CAPP, the nation's powerful oil lobby, has two growth scenarios for the tar sands. Given existing approvals and projects under construction, CAPP's more conservative forecast says oil sand production will grow from 1.8 million barrels a day to 2.8 million barrels by 2019 (tar sands production including diluents). That's a 50 per cent increase over 2010 production levels.

But a super "growth" CAPP scenario based on speculative numbers suggests production could reach nearly 4.6 million barrels per day by 2025, a growth rate of 154 per cent.

Enbridge, however, took these figures and jacked them up to 5.8 million barrels a day by 2035 or a growth rate of 217 per cent over 2010 levels. "Enbridge's rationale for the Northern Gateway Pipeline is based on its own unsubstantiated and highly optimistic projections for growth in oil sands production beyond 2025," reports Hughes. "This may serve Enbridge's corporate needs and those of its shareholders but does not consider the longer term environmental and energy security needs of Canadians."

In summary Hughes concludes that 50 per cent growth in oil sands production can be handled by existing pipelines and U.S. demand. In other words Gateway is not needed. (A Natural Resources Canada briefing note reached the same conclusion last year saying "Even without Northern Gateway, Canada will have enough crude oil export capacity for some considerable time.")

Slow and steady

Like many oil patch veterans, Hughes favors a slow and prudent course and doesn't recommend much further growth in bitumen production. "I agree with [former Alberta premier] Peter Lougheed. I think we should have a planned growth strategy that puts Canada first."

But Enbridge's radical growth projections would expand the scale of the mammoth tar sands project and triple current levels of production by 2035. Hughes calls such irrational growth a threat to the nation "in the light of the long term energy security and environmental interests of Canadians."

Furthermore, "the absence of National energy strategy which safeguards the long term energy security and environmental interests of Canadians means there are no constraints on the uncontrolled liquidation of Canada's intrinsic energy resources."

Asked why Natural Resources Canada hasn't raised these critical energy issues, Hughes paused for a moment on the phone at his home on Cortes Island in British Columbia.

"That's a good question," he replied.

*Story updated at 3:26 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2012.


----------



## Fishbone Jones (13 Jan 2012)

All I can see is Chicken Little runnng around saying "The sky is falling!!!"

If we stopped progress because of every doomsday or 'what if' scenario, we'd still be wearing clothes made from woven reeds and be living in holes in the ground.

The human race has excelled and advanced because we took chances, in spite of our mistakes.

Has every opportunity been a success? Of course not. However we didn't get where we are by saying "Boy, we really fucked that up, better not learn from our mistakes or try improve on that idea."

Of course, the naysayers have a point. We should all live in natural rock shelters and read by the light of homemade beeswax candles, just like they do, right? :

Oh wait, they don't, do they?


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## Edward Campbell (13 Jan 2012)

David Hughes has a rather Malthusian view of things.

I well remember when Canada was only a modest energy producer. Bitumen was known but not counted as a technically or economically feasible source of energy; now technology and price mean it is at market. Many Canadian and US oilfields were, just 15 years ago, considered to be dry; now new technology and higher prices have given them new "life." Things change, Malthus was wrong, Hughes might be wrong, too, for similar reasons.


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## Redeye (13 Jan 2012)

The concern that I have is that price is the sole determinant, and those technologies seem to have problems. Sure, fracking makes gas wells more productive, but at what cost? It's not surprising to me that there's a vocal movement that wants the practice banned, though I can't/won't comment on how large it is. I think if most people read up on the whole story on hydraulic fracturing - its impact on groundwater for example, and its believed connection with seismic events (at least two I've read about, one in the eastern USA and one in the UK), they'd probably not want to live anywhere near where it's being used. When you also look at the fact that cronyism got it exempted from environmental regulations in the USA, and start asking who benefits, to me a clear problem emerges. Natural gas may burn clean in comparison to coal, but getting it is still an extremely nasty process most people know little about.

It goes back to a simple point - price isn't a good determinant when there are so many externalities we don't price in. Good energy policy is important, but that has to involve capturing those externalities.




			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> David Hughes has a rather Malthusian view of things.
> 
> I well remember when Canada was only a modest energy producer. Bitumen was known but not counted as a technically or economically feasible source of energy; now technology and price mean it is at market. Many Canadian and US oilfields were, just 15 years ago, considered to be dry; now new technology and higher prices have given them new "life." Things change, Malthus was wrong, Hughes might be wrong, too, for similar reasons.


----------



## Edward Campbell (13 Jan 2012)

Of course price cannot be the sole determinant ... consider human "good."

In the past 50 years hundreds of millions of people have been shifted from abject poverty to the lower middle class (by our standards) and tens of millions more have moved to the middle and even upper classes. That is mor people living better lives than their parents than has ever happened in all of human history. That, as Martha Stewart might say, is a "good thing."

Energy - coal and gasoline, mainly - has been the most important single factor in that shift from "bad" to "good," followed closely by fertilizers.

But there are hundreds of millions to go.

One of key "shifts" is to get from this:






to this:





.

The hundreds of millions of people in Asia (and Africa) need oil to go from abject, human powered poverty to a decent, more productive, motorized lifestyle. We have the oil. Those who oppose increasing our oil supplies want to condemn those hundreds of millions to a life of poverty and misery. It is a morally indefensible position, equivalent to hoarding wheat during a famine rather than selling it.


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## RangerRay (13 Jan 2012)

I still don't like that BC is taking all the ecological risk, in an area unsuited for pipelines and oil tankers, while Alberta gets the financial benefit.

Speaking of foreign influence, Terry Glavin points out that the petro companies involved in this pipeline are either owned, or partly owned by Chinese state-owned companies, which is concerning.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/13/terry-glavin-canada-sells-the-oilsands-to-china-then-complains-about-foreign-interference/



> *Terry Glavin: Canada sells the oilsands to China. Then complains about ‘foreign interference’*
> 
> Jan 13, 2012 – 9:45 AM ET | Last Updated: Jan 13, 2012 9:49 AM ET
> 
> ...



Although I am far from being an enviro-whacko, the more I read on this, the less I like.


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## Kirkhill (13 Jan 2012)

And with a hop, skip and a jump Redeye moves from the pipeline to Frakking.  

I live in southern Alberta.  Frakking was developed here (Medicine Hat) and has been used for over two decades.

As to ground water quality - Oil was found in the Turner Valley in 1913 because of natural flares from seeps in the ground.



> William Stewart Herron, an Okotoks farmer, made the first gas discovery in Alberta when he noticed gas bubbling along the banks of Sheep Creek in the Turner Valley. In 1913, Herron, in partnership with Archibald W. Dingman, formed the Calgary Petroleum Products Company. One year later, the two men struck gas when they discovered the Dingman No. 1 well. This discovery inaugurated the Turner Valley oil era.



UofC Link

31 years out here, on and off, and No' Deid Yet.

And Ray.... what's your price for putting a pipeline through your backyard?  You say you're bothered that BC takes the Eco risk while Alberta reaps the financial reward,  what would be a fair share of the reward to offset your risk?

Open for business......


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## Redeye (13 Jan 2012)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> And with a hop, skip and a jump Redeye moves from the pipeline to Frakking.
> 
> I live in southern Alberta.  Frakking was developed here (Medicine Hat) and has been used for over two decades.
> 
> ...



Fracking is another excellent example of the problem of externalities, which I why I mentioned it. Great, it's worked in one place. In others, it's caused gas to seep into water supplies, among other problems. A completely illogical exemption to US environmental laws means that proprietary fracking fluids contain a myriad of substances we don't even know about and the process requires massive amounts of water which as best I understand it isn't treated. Again, who bears the cost of this? Kirkhill, you're actually making the argument for me. What's a fair share of the reward? Well, in order to assess that we have assess the actual costs involved. Right now, we're not actually paying anywhere near those. Without actually assessing the costs, how can we determine what adequate compensation is?

It sounds just awesome, fracking. Like this summation of several news reports combined with a pretty decent lesson in the "free market": http://www.truth-out.org/fracking-anatomy-free-market-failure/1326489492 - it's no wonder a lot of communities don't want this sort of thing going on in their backyards. The effects get borne by all, not just those who sign leases, which the NYT article cites a study on, suggesting that landowners signed deals that were very much not in their favour, and likely without adequate disclosures for them to make informed decisions.

I'm fine with more research into the tech, but I sure as hell don't want it anywhere near anywhere I'm living any time soon.


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## Kirkhill (14 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> ....
> 
> I'm fine with more research into the tech, but I sure as hell don't want it anywhere near anywhere I'm living any time soon.



Yep.... the answer to everything: more research, more data, more input.  Every decision can be delayed indefinitely until we have perfect situational awareness.  

On the plus side I'm reckoning you won't be moving to Alberta anytime soon.

Cheers.


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## a_majoor (14 Jan 2012)

> While it’s all good fun to play Spot the Freemason, something very serious is going on here. Last summer, John Bruk, the Asia Pacific Foundation’s founding president, warned that Ottawa was ignoring the rapid emergence of Chinese government interests “in sheep’s clothing” taking over Canada’s natural resource industries. Bruk told B.C. Business magazine: “Are we jeopardizing prosperity for our children and grandchildren while putting at risk our economic independence? In my view, this is exactly what is happening.”



While it is true the Chinese are buying up natural resources and control of companies at a rapid rate, the decision to extend the pipeline west rather than south was made in Washington DC, not Beijing. The companies involved and the Canadian government have all been pretty keen on the Keystone XL option to Texas (and most of the States the pipeline would have passed through were pretty supportive as well), going for the Pacific coast only became an option when it was clear the Administration would continue to use stalling tactics to block the pipeline.

That said, if Japan or India were to outbid the Chinese for oil, then the tankers would be sailing to Japan and India. This would not necessarily be a bad thing for the Chinese companies that invest in Canadaian resource companies, they would still receive payment for these purchases and have profits to invest, and Canadian workers would still be employed.


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## Edward Campbell (14 Jan 2012)

According to the this report (Alberta Gov't, 2008) only eight (of 21) major heavy oil projects are "Canadian," two more are Canadian plus a foreign partner - thus: half of the projects are already foreign owned, mostly by American firms, a few by British, Dutch and French firms, too.


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## Redeye (14 Jan 2012)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> Yep.... the answer to everything: more research, more data, more input.  Every decision can be delayed indefinitely until we have perfect situational awareness.



Indefinitely? No. But they can be delayed until we actually understand the consequences of the actions. The more comes to light about fracking the worse it looks, though, which does suggest to me that the risks aren't worth the returns. Particularly when the risks seem to be born by the public while the returns go primarily to the industry. Yes, the public benefits from theoretically cheaper and abundant natural gas, but you still can't make an assessment of cost/benefit when costs aren't known.



			
				Kirkhill said:
			
		

> On the plus side I'm reckoning you won't be moving to Alberta anytime soon.



Not near a gasfield, nope. Alberta's a beautiful place, I quite enjoyed the (limited) time I've spent there. But I happen to like my corner of the world as well, and I don't have plans to leave any time soon.


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## Brad Sallows (14 Jan 2012)

Canada's long-term energy security interest is to ensure that it shares (develops and exports, for sale) its energy with the rest of the world over the long term.  The alternative, if things get bad enough, is war.  You want peace?  Exploit resources.


----------



## Kirkhill (14 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> Indefinitely? No. But they can be delayed until we actually understand the consequences of the actions. The more comes to light about fracking the worse it looks, though, which does suggest to me that the risks aren't worth the returns. Particularly when the risks seem to be born by the public while the returns go primarily to the industry. Yes, the public benefits from theoretically cheaper and abundant natural gas, but you still can't make an assessment of cost/benefit when costs aren't known.
> 
> Not near a gasfield, nope. Alberta's a beautiful place, I quite enjoyed the (limited) time I've spent there. But I happen to like my corner of the world as well, and I don't have plans to leave any time soon.



But Redeye you will never ever know everything about everything.  That capability isn't given to anybody down here.  You will always work with the best available hypothesis at the time the decision is required of you..... And you will always, eventually, be proven wrong.  Circumstances will change with time and someone somewhere will argue that a "better" decision could have been made....and they will be right.  But, at the time of the decision the circumstances, the knowledge base and the understanding were different than they are and than they will be.  

When I design a plant or a solution it is based on the best available information and my best guesses.  I will deliver it and make it work.  In three months time the operators will know that plant a whole lot better than I do.  The next step is to start fixing the plant to make it work in the real world.  Making cheese, bread, beer or wurst - GPMGs, M1 Abrams or F35s - or oil and gas facilities the process is always the same.   Prior Planning Prevents P*ss Poor Performance.  Prior Planning does not Procure Perfection.  It may only get you to Poor Performance.

Side bar:  A personal bug bear of mine is accountants with their predilection for counting pennies - even on projects of millions of dollars.  A penny on a $10,000,000 system represents a 99.9999999% of surety.  Using the best available texts and data and conducting confirmatory studies it is the rare project where I can get you greater than a 70% level of surety.  90% is a real stretch.  This is because most analyses are only accurate to two to three digits.  Rounding results in one to two digits.  1 digit represents a 10% uncertainty level. 2 digits represents a 1% uncertainty level.  If you want greater certainty than that you won't find it in this world.   Those levels of uncertainty are the reason why every project in the world incorporates at least one safety factor (often in the 20% sometimes 100% range) and at least one contingency factor (in the 5 to 25% range).  A 25% contingency factor means that the $10,000,000 project incorporates a $2,000,000 allowance for screw ups.  Of the remaining $8,000,000 a 50% safety factor could result in an over engineered plant with $4,000,000 of unused, unprofitable material.  Thus your $10,000,000 plant may actually only deliver $4,000,000 of capability -  and we haven't touched on the profit I want to make on this thing yet.  The only mitigating factor in all of this is that I am competing for the job against other folks, some of whom may have better knowledge and experience - and willing to reduce the contingency from 25% to 50%, some of whom may be willing to take a greater risk and reduce the safety factor to code minimum, and some of whom are willing to reduce their profit margin (they are in the minority).

As to the Alberta Gas Field......arguably the "Alberta" Gas Field extends from the MacKenzie Delta to Prince George and Brandon and down past the border across the US between the Mississippi and the Rockies and on into Mexico and its Gulf.

Cheers.

And, just having seen Brad's post, it IS better to sell your resources to someone that is desperate for them than deny them those resources.  If you won't give them, they will take them.  Better that you should make a profit than pay for a war.

Having said that, with foreign investment in domestic resources, we always maintain the upper hand because we possess those resources.  In extremis we can always abrogate any contracts in force, even nationalize the assets in place, and dare the owners of the assets to come and get them.  This is not an unknown risk for energy companies.


----------



## Kalatzi (14 Jan 2012)

"Rant on"

IMHO We are NEVER going to get back on track so long as the Harper Government has the obbsession that the main problem facing Canada is "Islamiscism". 

Our economic competitors are laughing their heads off over their woks at that one.  To Paraphrase Lenin, "When we hang the last Western, it wil be with a rope, that WE sold Them, on credit. 

Finally thinking back to the last incursion into Lebanon, and  the murder of one of our UN peacekeepers, with allies like Isreal, who needs enemies.

As Slick Willie once famously said to Dubya's pappy, "Its the economy, Stupid". 

"/Rant off"


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## RangerRay (14 Jan 2012)

Wha...????


----------



## GAP (14 Jan 2012)

someone's off their meds....


----------



## Kalatzi (14 Jan 2012)

True - but it was good to get that out of my system


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## Redeye (14 Jan 2012)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> But Redeye you will never ever know everything about everything.  That capability isn't given to anybody down here.  You will always work with the best available hypothesis at the time the decision is required of you..... And you will always, eventually, be proven wrong.  Circumstances will change with time and someone somewhere will argue that a "better" decision could have been made....and they will be right.  But, at the time of the decision the circumstances, the knowledge base and the understanding were different than they are and than they will be.



I accept that that we'll never know everything - but the reason I (and I'm by no means the only person) am not a fan of it is based on what we do know so far. We know that fracking contaminates water.  US states have ordered gas companies to supply drinking water to people whose wells have been rendered non-potable as a result of fracking activities. That doesn't necessarily help, the NYT article told the story of a family who are now getting water delivered but have to pay a lot of money for electricity to keep the water buffalo heated in the winter. There are also now studies into seismic impacts.

I have problems when I read about landmen basically using high pressure techniques to get people to sign leases for gas production without those people realizing the full extent of what they're getting into. It is to an extent their fault that they didn't get independent legal advice, but a good salesman can get people do forget about that sort of thing. I see it happen all the time in my day job.

Can we produce gas without fracking? As I understand it, yes. The wells aren't as productive, but perhaps that's a trade we have to accept should it become clear that the cost of fracking is indeed too high.



			
				Kirkhill said:
			
		

> When I design a plant or a solution it is based on the best available information and my best guesses.  I will deliver it and make it work.  In three months time the operators will know that plant a whole lot better than I do.  The next step is to start fixing the plant to make it work in the real world.  Making cheese, bread, beer or wurst - GPMGs, M1 Abrams or F35s - or oil and gas facilities the process is always the same.   Prior Planning Prevents P*ss Poor Performance.  Prior Planning does not Procure Perfection.  It may only get you to Poor Performance.



Perfection is impossible, agreed. But remember that when you do those things, you're looking after the interests of your employer. The cost to other stakeholders isn't yours to worry about. Those costs in the case of fracking are looking significant. In the case of the USA, they're not even getting reported because of exemptions to environmental laws the Bush Administration gifted to the gas industry (who were, undeniably, heavily connected friends of that administration). The fact is, just what's visible on the surface leaves a lot of questions.



			
				Kirkhill said:
			
		

> Side bar:  A personal bug bear of mine is accountants with their predilection for counting pennies - even on projects of millions of dollars.  A penny on a $10,000,000 system represents a 99.9999999% of surety.  Using the best available texts and data and conducting confirmatory studies it is the rare project where I can get you greater than a 70% level of surety.  90% is a real stretch.  This is because most analyses are only accurate to two to three digits.  Rounding results in one to two digits.  1 digit represents a 10% uncertainty level. 2 digits represents a 1% uncertainty level.  If you want greater certainty than that you won't find it in this world.   Those levels of uncertainty are the reason why every project in the world incorporates at least one safety factor (often in the 20% sometimes 100% range) and at least one contingency factor (in the 5 to 25% range).  A 25% contingency factor means that the $10,000,000 project incorporates a $2,000,000 allowance for screw ups.  Of the remaining $8,000,000 a 50% safety factor could result in an over engineered plant with $4,000,000 of unused, unprofitable material.  Thus your $10,000,000 plant may actually only deliver $4,000,000 of capability -  and we haven't touched on the profit I want to make on this thing yet.  The only mitigating factor in all of this is that I am competing for the job against other folks, some of whom may have better knowledge and experience - and willing to reduce the contingency from 25% to 50%, some of whom may be willing to take a greater risk and reduce the safety factor to code minimum, and some of whom are willing to reduce their profit margin (they are in the minority).



I agree on the counting pennies thing - it gets ridiculous. (Why do you think so many of us were annoyed when the US Federal Government cut funding to a vital service provider, Planned Parenthood, saving $75M out of a budget of how many billions?)



			
				Kirkhill said:
			
		

> As to the Alberta Gas Field......arguably the "Alberta" Gas Field extends from the MacKenzie Delta to Prince George and Brandon and down past the border across the US between the Mississippi and the Rockies and on into Mexico and its Gulf.



True. To be clear - I meant a developed, in production gas field - or one reasonably expected to be so in the near term!



			
				Kirkhill said:
			
		

> And, just having seen Brad's post, it IS better to sell your resources to someone that is desperate for them than deny them those resources.  If you won't give them, they will take them.  Better that you should make a profit than pay for a war.
> 
> Having said that, with foreign investment in domestic resources, we always maintain the upper hand because we possess those resources.  In extremis we can always abrogate any contracts in force, even nationalize the assets in place, and dare the owners of the assets to come and get them.  This is not an unknown risk for energy companies.



Interesting last statement though. Things like NAFTA have interesting implications for that - essentially, once you start selling something, you can't really stop without legal headaches. And that's what can start wars over resources.


----------



## Edward Campbell (14 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> ...
> I agree on the counting pennies thing - it gets ridiculous. (Why do you think so many of us were annoyed when the US Federal Government cut funding to a vital service provider, Planned Parenthood, saving $75M out of a budget of how many billions?)
> ...




To paraphrase CD Howe, "$75 Million here, $75 Million there, pretty soon you're talking real money."

Cuts have to start somewhere ... it was your favourite ox being gored, but might you have been less outraged had the cuts come from, say, Farm Credit Canada?


----------



## Edward Campbell (14 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> ...
> 
> Interesting last statement though. Things like NAFTA have interesting implications for that - essentially, once you start selling something, you can't really stop without legal headaches. And that's what can start wars over resources.




Just a reminder, see here, especially the *Conclusion* which says: _"NAFTA does not commit Canada to exporting a certain share of it energy supply to the United States."_


----------



## SeaKingTacco (14 Jan 2012)

Let me just say that, having lived in Alberta half my life, I have lived around Fracking a long time. I know people who frack for a living. I have lived on a farm with a producing gas well that was fracked (fwiw, our tap contained natural gas both before and after the gas well went in).

However, Redeye, you have gained your knowledge of Fracking from the New York Times and a bunch of websites (most of which is complete crap and devoid of any independent scientific verification), so I will defer to you from here forward. Clearly, nothing anyone says here will change your mind.


----------



## a_majoor (15 Jan 2012)

Back on the topic of economics, here is an interesting primer on the Austrian School (mostly by pointing out how it is being distorted) and what it really means:

http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/13/how-liberals-distort-austrian-economics/singlepage



> *How Liberals Distort Austrian Economics*
> The lame campaign to discredit the Austrian school
> 
> Sheldon Richman | January 13, 2012
> ...


----------



## Redeye (15 Jan 2012)

SeaKingTacco said:
			
		

> Let me just say that, having lived in Alberta half my life, I have lived around Fracking a long time. I know people who frack for a living. I have lived on a farm with a producing gas well that was fracked (fwiw, our tap contained natural gas both before and after the gas well went in).
> 
> However, Redeye, you have gained your knowledge of Fracking from the New York Times and a bunch of websites (most of which is complete crap and devoid of any independent scientific verification), so I will defer to you from here forward. Clearly, nothing anyone says here will change your mind.



There's pretty much no such thing as "independent scientific verification that would be acceptable to either party, I suspect. I don't know of much "fracking isn't destructive" study work, but it would almost assuredly be easy to trace who paid for it to industry groups - and likely the reverse is true. There is, as I said, enough out there that suggests that there's major problems with the technology, which is enough for me to be opposed until more work on mitigation becomes clear.


----------



## SeaKingTacco (15 Jan 2012)

> There is, as I said, enough out there that suggests that there's major problems with the technology,



Says you. 

I suppose we will have to agree to disagree.


----------



## Edward Campbell (15 Jan 2012)

Redeye is getting close to what I think is the truth or near truth: not much of the "evidence" available on either side of almost any _environmental_ question is "good." The companies employ skilled PR firms to make their case - emphasizing the benefits and hiding or, at least, camouflaging the risks. But so do the greenies, who are also both "big businesses" in their own right and employers of skilled PR agencies. Worse, from my point of view, the environmentalists get a free ride because we (almost) all agree that they are well intentioned and, by and large, nice people. What we forget is that:

1. There are a lot of reputable scientists in the environmental movement;
2. There are about as many reputable scientists working for the big, bad, dirty oil industry;
3. There are also a lot of self serving scientists charlatans, many with PhDs and their own TV shows in the environmental movement;
4. The media, like most Canadians, are unable to distinguish between the hard working, concerned, reputable scientists and the charlatans; and
5. Given that some of the charlatans are media _celebrities_ their views get pretty uncritical acceptance.

The end result is that most of us are, honestly, concerned because we have been, often dishonestly, misinformed.


----------



## Redeye (15 Jan 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Redeye is getting close to what I think is the truth or near truth: not much of the "evidence" available on either side of almost any _environmental_ question is "good." The companies employ skilled PR firms to make their case - emphasizing the benefits and hiding or, at least, camouflaging the risks. But so do the greenies, who are also both "big businesses" in their own right and employers of skilled PR agencies. Worse, from my point of view, the environmentalists get a free ride because we (almost) all agree that they are well intentioned and, by and large, nice people. What we forget is that:
> 
> 1. There are a lot of reputable scientists in the environmental movement;
> 2. There are about as many reputable scientists working for the big, bad, dirty oil industry;
> ...



That's basically what I was getting at, yes. There's a lot of science out there to try to pore over and it's not easy to get a clear picture without reading a lot. There are plenty of charlatans, and that way that research is funded is designed very carefully to obscure who is interested in the message of any particular study. Thus I find myself as you say concerned because I know that the clearly broadcast messages are not necessarily being presented fairly or honestly.

Is the oil and gas industry manifestly bad? No, not in my opinion. There's lots of people who work in those industries looking to preserve the environment as best as possible, and of course we have to balance the desire for a completely pristine environment with our need for fuel, and the myriad of other products dependent on petroleum and gas. When you really start to look at everything that ultimately comes from that industry, it becomes clear to me why we have to use those resources wisely. I want to see more innovation to use the products more efficiently and to get them more efficiently, protecting things like drinking water and so on.


----------



## Edward Campbell (15 Jan 2012)

But what it appears, to me anyway, that you are ignoring, Redeye is that some (many, actually) people in the _environmental_ movement have an intense anti-capitalist, anti-development agenda. Their concern is not a pristine environment, it is the destruction of our capitalist system and the introduction of something else.

I'll also repeat my contention that most of the greenies want to deny a billion plus poor Asians the sort of lower middle class life that we have taken for granted since about 1920 ... they are in the "I'm all right, Jack" mode and they are happy to not share resources with those who need them to move from grinding, human powered poverty to something better ... and motorized.


----------



## Redeye (15 Jan 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> But what it appears, to me anyway, that you are ignoring, Redeye is that some (many, actually) people in the _environmental_ movement have an intense anti-capitalist, anti-development agenda. Their concern is not a pristine environment, it is the destruction of our capitalist system and the introduction of something else.



No, I'm well aware of them. While they get to the forefront (often so they can be best positioned as "the opponent" to development or so as to be seen as speaking for all people concerned about the environment or sustainability), they're not the majority of people who have an interest in the issues I don't think. They're basically a form of strawmen. There's plenty of people extremely concerned about environmental issues who want to find a good balance.



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I'll also repeat my contention that most of the greenies want to deny a billion plus poor Asians the sort of lower middle class life that we have taken for granted since about 1920 ... they are in the "I'm all right, Jack" mode and they are happy to not share resources with those who need them to move from grinding, human powered poverty to something better ... and motorized.



That's not how I see things - part of the reason I'd love for more innovation to happen here is to make it available to all - to allow those "poor Asians" to skip a few generations of bad technology. They have an advantage in that sense that they don't need to follow the same development track (with its associated mistakes/inefficiencies). To put that in better context, or try to illustrate what I mean, look at telecommunications in the developing world - entire generations of technology like landlines have been skipped because there was no need to waste time, money, and resources when you can go straight to the cutting edge. No reason those "poor Asians" can't be helped to do the same.

A common fallacious argument about trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for example is that China and/or India will simply ignore any demands on them and that'll render any improvements we make moot. There's no reason to believe that if they have the ability to get access (or themselves develop, which I'm certain they'll do a lot of) technologies that efficiently meet the goals we are going for. As I understand it, for example, China is finally starting to acknowledge that air quality is a major problem in certain areas and actually working to improve it - just reporting it is a start, and I read recently about how the reporting of air quality is being improved to more clearly monitor things like particulate matter etc. That may well lead to public interest and then demand to do better.


----------



## Edward Campbell (15 Jan 2012)

Redeye said:
			
		

> ... I'd love for more innovation to happen here is to make it available to all - to allow those "poor Asians" to skip a few generations of bad technology. They have an advantage in that sense that they don't need to follow the same development track (with its associated mistakes/inefficiencies). To put that in better context, or try to illustrate what I mean, look at telecommunications in the developing world - entire generations of technology like landlines have been skipped because there was no need to waste time, money, and resources when you can go straight to the cutting edge. No reason those "poor Asians" can't be helped to do the same.
> 
> A common fallacious argument about trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for example is that China and/or India will simply ignore any demands on them and that'll render any improvements we make moot. There's no reason to believe that if they have the ability to get access (or themselves develop, which I'm certain they'll do a lot of) technologies that efficiently meet the goals we are going for. As I understand it, for example, China is finally starting to acknowledge that air quality is a major problem in certain areas and actually working to improve it - just reporting it is a start, and I read recently about how the reporting of air quality is being improved to more clearly monitor things like particulate matter etc. That may well lead to public interest and then demand to do better.




But right now, this year, hundreds of millions of families live off the _productivity_ of the "beast of burden" in the picture below, which I took a little over a year ago. Innovation is great, and it will come ... but he wants to and can increase his productivity right now if, as I said before, he can progress - and it IS *progress* - from human power to motorized or electrical power. (Bearing in mind that most electrical power in China is generated in coal fired plants.)

China is interested in its environment - the Chinese do want to clean the air and water; but they also want to move from poverty to something better and they are not inclined to wait until a green technology is available. I have lived in some pretty poor places. The wretchedly poor people I have met, Africans, Arabs, Asians and others, are pretty much exactly like us - smart and dumb in the exact same ratios, honest and venal, just like us, brave and cowardly, like all the rest of humanity. And like all the rest of humanity, I cannot recall one one single Chinese person who thought that your _environmentalism_ trumped his right to improve his lot in life ... the fellow in the picture is tired of waiting.


----------



## a_majoor (15 Jan 2012)

Sadly, many of the actual tchnologies that do exist are blocked or severely hamperd in the West. Nuclear power is virtually impossible to install, new generations of oil refining technologies are limited to the opposition to building new oil refineries and so on.

Foe the Chinese, this isn't as much of an issue, they are starting to build nuclear powerplants on a very large scale, but poorer nations either cannot afford nuclear energy, or are limited to older generations of design which are generally less efficient and less safe. (Anyone who is shopping for Russian nuclear reactors is literally playing with fire).

This is doubly bad, *we* don't get the benefit of cleaner, more efficient electricity or oil, nor are we developing high tech/high value industries that we can market to nations that need these products (a win/win proposition). As noted, the underlying thrust of the "Green" movement (which I will separate fron the environmental movement) is the opposition to capitalist and technological civilization. (Having been imersed in the field environment for most of my professional life, I do support the preservation and upkeep of the environment, but I do not believe for a moment that the methods advocated by the Greens are the way to do this).


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## Kirkhill (15 Jan 2012)

Instead of frakking how do you feel about throwing some bugs down Sidney Mines or some of the old Spring Hill shafts and let them produce Methane - aka Biogas (good) or Natural gas (bad).

http://eem.jacksonkelly.com/2011/05/bioconversion-of-in-situ-coal-to-methane-microbes-used-to-convert-coal-to-gaseous-fuel.html

I am sure it would work equally well with Chinese speaking bugs.

New, and old, technologies come in all shapes and sizes.


----------



## Redeye (15 Jan 2012)

Now that is interesting indeed!



			
				Kirkhill said:
			
		

> Instead of frakking how do you feel about throwing some bugs down Sidney Mines or some of the old Spring Hill shafts and let them produce Methane - aka Biogas (good) or Natural gas (bad).
> 
> http://eem.jacksonkelly.com/2011/05/bioconversion-of-in-situ-coal-to-methane-microbes-used-to-convert-coal-to-gaseous-fuel.html
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (16 Jan 2012)

Rex Murphy on the role of "Greens" in the decision making process. The end of their "free ride" in the press now that the Resource Minister Joe Oliver has publicly called them out should create changes (although not all of them may be considered positive)

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/14/rex-murphy-thou-must-not-question-big-environment/



> *Rex Murphy: Thou must not question Big Environment*
> Rex Murphy  Jan 14, 2012 – 9:02 AM ET | Last Updated: Jan 13, 2012 5:06 PM ET
> 
> Like the Pope speaking ex cathedra, Greenpeace can never be wrong
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (17 Jan 2012)

And the Prime Minister sums it up nicely:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/01/16/pol-harper-mansbridge-interview.html



> *Harper says pipeline debate should be left to Canadians*
> Canada not 'giant national park' for U.S., prime minister says
> CBC News
> Posted: Jan 16, 2012 9:01 PM ET
> ...


----------



## GAP (23 Jan 2012)

Not sure if this belongs here or in Global economy thread.....

U.S. economy unlikely to fully recover: Carney
Postmedia News  Jan 22, 2012 
Article Link

By Robert Hiltz
OTTAWA — Canada needs to look beyond its southern neighbour for markets because the United States economy is unlikely to ever fully recover, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said Sunday.
In an interview with CTV’s Question Period, Carney said that it is vital for Canada to look for new trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere to prevent the economy from being dragged down by the U.S.
“It’s going to take a number of years before they get back to the U.S. that we used to know — in fact, they are not, in our opinion, ultimately going to get back to the U.S. that we used to know,” he said.
Carney pointed to China as a market with great potential and as a place where Canada is currently under-represented, but cautioned it would take time to enhance trade between the two countries.
“It’s going to take multiple visits, multiple initiatives. Not, obviously, from the public sector alone, but clearly a focus from the private sector,” Carney said. “That is absolutely essential for developing our future and it’s a key element of our medium-term growth.”
More on link


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## Edward Campbell (23 Jan 2012)

GAP said:
			
		

> Not sure if this belongs here or in Global economy thread.....
> 
> U.S. economy unlikely to fully recover: Carney
> Postmedia News  Jan 22, 2012
> ...




I put the story (different source) on the US/World Economics' effect on Canada thread yesterday, and I was wondering, given my comments, if it didn't belong in the Canada's New (Conservative) Foreign Policy thread. Mark Carney has a habit of saying interesting things that have ramifications across many areas.


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## ridgecrest (25 Jan 2012)

The U.S. is Canada's true ally. The markets aren't looking too great for China and they could collapse from within.


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## a_majoor (25 Jan 2012)

Canada has been looking farther afield for years. We have free trade deals with nations like Chile, signed expanded trade treatys with the EU (although given their current economic issues that might not have been such a great move) and are looking to expand our presence in the Pacific rim as well.

Still, as Edward has said, geography alone makes the US our closest neighbour and biggest market. (Just look at the difference between a straight pipeline to Texas and the current plan to ship oil to China involving a pipeline over the Rocky mountains, expanded port facilities on the West Coast and sheparding a tanker fleet through Canadian waters to and from the terminal). Spreading the reach of Canadian trade will be a very long term project, and Canadian business will need to be far more agressive in looking for overseas opportunities as well.


----------



## Edward Campbell (28 Jan 2012)

At last!

A new, Conservative, social policy framework is taking shape, according to this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harpers-use-of-europes-debt-crisis-as-backdrop-for-speech-no-coincidence/article2318288/


> Harper's use of Europe’s debt crisis as backdrop for speech no coincidence
> 
> STEVEN CHASE AND BILL CURRY
> 
> ...




First: it may be a little hypocritical for someone like me, who is well over 65, to be cheering for reduced benefits for e.g. my son, who, not being 40 yet, is likely to be the object of social policy changes; but

Second: we, all of us - no matter what age, must face the demographic and financial facts. Our social spending envelope, the money we ask our children and grandchildren - yet unborn, perhaps - to pay to support us, is too _rich_. We have, as Prime Minister Harper said, _"too much [government] debt, too much general willingness to have standards and benefits beyond our ability or even willingness to pay for them ..."_ We are reluctant to say "no," but even more reluctant to pay up.

Harper, Flaherty and Menzies, _et al_ are doing for future governments what Mulroney, Wilson and Mazankowski did for Chrétien, Martin and Harper: telling Canadians that we must live within our means. Bravo!


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## GAP (28 Jan 2012)

There was an interview on Power Play (I believe) that the US has already started on this program. They have done it on the basis of 1 month per year extension, thus in 24 years retirement will be 67....


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## GAP (28 Jan 2012)

Interesting article on RIM and Founderitis 

The diagnosis for Research In Motion: acute Founderitis
michael posner Globe and Mail Friday, Jan. 27, 2012
Article Link

The phrase “severe reality distortion field” is probably not one you bump into every day. But if you were seeking a clinical description of the problems that continue to beset the once-vibrant health of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion, SRDF might be just the ticket.

The phrase comes courtesy of Christine Comaford, a San Francisco-based “rapid-growth and turnaround expert,” who, as a BlackBerry owner, is also a disappointed observer of RIM's recent travails. “I am so depressed to see what's happening to the company.”

SRDF, according to Ms. Comaford, is a distinguishing symptom of Founderitis, a more serious malaise that, in her judgment, clearly victimized Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, the former chief executive officers of RIM.

Sometimes referred to as Founder's Syndrome, it typically strikes successful business owners and organizations that fail to adapt to changing competitive landscapes.

Founders must overcome incredible odds to realize their visions, often by adopting unorthodox strategies. 

For example, when Michael Overs, founder of Toronto's Pizza Pizza, was starting out, he insisted that all franchises share a single telephone number, and that customers be guaranteed delivery in 30 minutes – or the pizza would be free. Although consultants warned him that both ideas were impractical, he held out and built an empire. Iconoclasm, when it works, can pay huge dividends.

But with Founder's Syndrome, the very character assets that yield initial success – stubbornness, charisma, risk-taking – eventually become liabilities. Hostage to old ways of looking at the world, founders fail to see the emergence of new realities and can be blind to recommendations – or, in the case of RIM, demands – for change. 
More on link


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## Edward Campbell (1 Feb 2012)

A good and a fair question posed in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/why-isnt-ei-reform-on-harper-governments-radar/article2322100/


> Why isn’t EI reform on Harper government’s radar?
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> 
> ...




EI or UI has come (or gone) a long way from the days when it was an "insurance" programme aimed to tide one over between jobs. I, personally, remember when many (most?) workers ( but not "professionals" like e.g. teachers or civil servants) had a UI book - they got stamps for every two weeks worked, to prove their employment status - in much the same way as other "insurance" products had books and stamps and in the same way that bonds had coupons. Not, as Ibbitson points out, it is a form of institutionalized welfare which has everything to so with where you live not whether or not you need some temporary support between jobs.

The _pogey_ has become part of the Canadian socio-economic landscape; we, citizens in e.g. Alberta and Ontario pay people to stay home in some regions while they work at seasonal jobs rather than allowing (forcing?) them to move to other regions to get good, steady work.

Politicians are afraid to touch EI, fearing a too big backlash.

Prim Minister Harper deserves credit for moving, albeit slowly, on pension reform - assuming he is going to do that; he could get more "bang for the buck" by looking more closely at EI.


----------



## Rifleman62 (1 Feb 2012)

Add UI reform as an item on his secret agenda to be introduced after a majority reelection in 3/4 years.


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## GAP (1 Feb 2012)

I don't see UI being touched until the next mandate, and then only after a long education of the populace, and.....if the majority is larger.


----------



## Edward Campbell (1 Feb 2012)

This, our economy growing less dependent on the USA, as indicated in this report which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is (mostly) good news so long as the economy is growing, however slowly:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/growth/canadian-economy-growing-less-reliant-on-us-td/article2322690/


> Canadian economy growing less reliant on U.S.: TD
> 
> HUGH MCKENNA
> 
> ...




One point: While the "thickening" of the US border was/is _mostly_ the result of security concerns, big labour, in particular, has been especially active in trying to keep the border closed - to "protect" American jobs from competition - and big labour is a key Obama supporter.

And another: We need to push harder to expand our trade with Asia and we need ro recognize that Brazil, with weak industrial/labour and investment standards and a fairly high tolerance for corruption, is our main competitor.

Finally: However (temporarily) weak it may be, the US remains our "best" market - closest, most familiar, friendliest, easiest with which to deal, most law abiding, etc.


----------



## GAP (3 Feb 2012)

The CAW just lost a lot of credibility on this one, plus there are now 400 employees out of work.......Great Job there CAW....you did your members proud....

Caterpillar to close London, Ont. locomotive plant
Reuters  Feb 3, 2012 
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/02/03/caterpillar-to-close-london-ont-locomotive-plant/

Caterpillar Inc plans to close its Electro-Motive locomotive plant in London, Ontario, following several months of unsuccessful contract negotiations with the Canadian Auto Workers union.

Electo-Motive is run by Caterpillar’s U.S.-based Progress Rail unit. The London plant employed more than 400 hourly workers, all of whom have been locked out of the plant since the beginning of 2012 due to the contract dispute.

The company said on Friday the closing is taking place because the cost structure of the operation is not sustainable and new agreement has not been forthcoming. Caterpillar’s contract with Electro-Motive Canada workers in London expired Dec. 31.

Caterpillar had been looking for wage and benefit concessions from the CAW.

A CAW spokeswoman could not immediately comment on the matter.

More on link


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## GAP (4 Feb 2012)

A little dated, but the information is relevant.................The whole series is a good read.

The Chopping Block: 2. Business subsidies
Special to Financial Post  Sep 29, 2011 
Article Link

Eliminating regional agencies can save $8-billion over four years

By Niels Veldhuis and Charles Lammam

With the global economy looking ever more fragile, the Conservative government should feel increasingly uneasy about its plan to balance the budget. To strengthen the current plan and promptly balance the budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty should aim his sights at cutting unnecessary government spending. An easy first step is to put regional development spending on The Chopping Block.

Since establishing the first of two region-specific development agencies in 1987-88, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and Western Economic Diversification, the number of agencies and amount spent by the federal government on regional development has increased significantly (see graph).

In 2010-11, the federal government distributed almost $2-billion through its main regional initiatives: Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario ($507-million), Canada Economic Development for the Regions of Quebec ($463-million), Western Economic Diversification ($429-million), Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency ($382-million), Northern Ontario Development Program ($61-million), and Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency ($61-million).

While these regional development schemes share common goals like encouraging economic growth in flagging communities and regions with few employment opportunities, they have historically had little, if any, positive net economic impact.

All federal regional development agencies focus on providing subsidies to businesses through repayable contributions or “loans” (often not paid back) and non-repayable contributions. In 2009-10, subsidies to businesses and other organizations made up 65% of Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency’s spending, 54% of Western Economic Diversification spending and 62% of Canada Economic Development for the Regions of Quebec spending.

The justification for these subsidies is that capital from the private sector is unavailable, either because entrepreneurs are unaware of the opportunities in these areas or unwilling to take the risk.  The reality, however, is that in many cases, loans and non-repayable subsidies are provided to businesses to fund investments that would have proceeded without involuntary taxpayer-financed assistance.

Also troubling is the fact that businesses receiving federal subsidies bid up the price of labour, capital and other resources, which increases the cost of these factors for non-subsidized businesses and ultimately reduces private investment.

The poor track record of business subsidies spurring economic growth is well documented.  This is particularly true for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. In a 2003 examination, University of Calgary professor Jack Mintz and University of Toronto professor Michael Smart concluded: “the impact of [the Agency’s] activities has questionable effects on the economy at a relatively significant cost.”

Canada’s Auditor-General has found similar results in its examinations of the federal government’s regional development initiatives. For instance, in a wide-ranging audit of such initiatives, the Auditor-General found that most programs had objectives stated in general terms rather than specific, measurable goals. And despite the billions spent on economic development programs, there was no clear consensus on results.

The Auditor-General has also confirmed that government regional subsidies displace existing businesses. In one case, the federal government sponsored the construction of a new fish plant in Quebec at a cost of $2.2-million. The plant was built near an established, already operating fish plant, which also received federal subsidies. More than 250 jobs were to be created by the construction of the new plant, but this job creation was offset by the closure of the established plant with as many employees.

In the case of the federal government’s regional development projects in Quebec, the Auditor-General noted how Ottawa’s own evaluators of those projects could not determine if those programs were of any benefit and noted 30% of projects that received financial aid would have gone ahead without government assistance.
More on link


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## GAP (7 Feb 2012)

GAP said:
			
		

> The CAW just lost a lot of credibility on this one, plus there are now 400 employees out of work.......Great Job there CAW....you did your members proud....
> 
> Caterpillar to close London, Ont. locomotive plant
> Reuters  Feb 3, 2012
> ...



Oh, the Dippers and the Star are all aflutter with this one......nationalize!!, intellectual property rights!! etc......Coyne puts it perspective..............

Andrew Coyne: Caterpillar’s EMD facility never really was ‘our’ plant
Feb 6, 2012
Article Link

By now, the nationalist version of last week’s closing of the Electro-Motive Diesel locomotive plant in London, Ont., has been firmly established in the public mind, told and retold in a thousand accounts, roughly two-thirds of them in the Toronto Star. As described by the squadron of columnists the paper apparently keeps on hand for such events, the “London massacre,” or in more polite terms, “industrial rape,” was not merely a business decision by the plant’s owners, Caterpillar Inc., or even an egregious assault on workers’ rights.

Rather, Caterpillar was absconding with a vast storehouse of intellectual property developed at “London’s 90-year-old EMD” — patents, technology, equipment, trade secrets, manufacturing processes, the works. Worse, it was doing so with the benefit of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. Why, “only last year,” the paper’s business columnist, David Olive, fumed, EMD received “a $5-million federal subsidy hand-delivered by Stephen Harper during a factory visit.”

It was nothing less than “highway robbery,” political columnist Martin Regg Cohn raged. Caterpillar had bought the plant purely in order to “harvest the technological know-how subsidized with government incentives and writeoffs.” But never mind the industrial rape: there are bigger issues in play. “Why underwrite our companies,” Cohn wrote, “if we willingly sell off our embedded brainpower to foreign bidders who leave Canada cash-rich, patent poor and jobless?” 
More on link


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## a_majoor (7 Feb 2012)

Good catch on the Cpyne article, I imagine it must be making some leftie's heads explode.

Perhaps more pressing is the issue of transfer payments, which is the subject of this National Post comment. The process is unsustainabl and the ability of provinces to game the system only makes it worse:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/02/07/john-ivison-canadas-coming-equalization-war/



> *John Ivison: Canada’s coming equalization war*
> John Ivison  Feb 7, 2012 – 8:26 PM ET | Last Updated: Feb 7, 2012 8:49 PM ET
> 
> Caterpillar’s closure of the Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London, Ont., is troubling, not just because of the loss of 465 well-paid jobs, but also for what it says about Ontario’s ability to compete for manufacturing jobs.
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (9 Feb 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> A good and a fair question posed in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/why-isnt-ei-reform-on-harper-governments-radar/article2322100/
> 
> ...




The "good and fair question" is _Why isn't EI on the Government's Radar?_

Here is another article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_, that indicates that our current EI scheme is helping some individuals but hurting the "commonwealth:"

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/02/08/john-ivison-outdated-federal-policies-killing-jobs-in-western-canada/


> John Ivison: Outdated federal policies killing jobs in western Canada
> 
> John Ivison
> 
> ...




Given the "culture of entitlement" that defines so many (most?) Canadians it is not surprising that Prime Minister Harper, a practical politician, doesn't want to touch it, but the government should serve all Canadians, not just the whiners.


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## captloadie (9 Feb 2012)

Coming from a family that had on occasion to rely on EI to get by, I find it personally offensive that they expect people who are actually working in resource areas (fishing, lumber, farming) to pick up and move. Most of the workers that are "seasonal" work long hard hours, eking by a living, just like their forefathers did. But hey, we could just tie up all the small fishing boats, put away the chainsaws, and let large conglomerates take over. 

Maybe someone should write an article about making welfare cases move to find jobs, and maybe having to actually work for their money.

As for the Saskatchewan Premier, how about ending farm subsidies, and when the farmers all sell off, he'll have an ample labour force.

 :2c:


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## GAP (9 Feb 2012)

That's tripe and you know it. Since when is entitlement to EI a right? Nobody is slagging hard working people out of work RIGHT ACROSS THE COUNTRY.  You go where the jobs are, or you take what's available.

The easy EI was introduced by both the Liberals and Cons to get votes. Since then it has become a mantra, and it has to stop.


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## captloadie (9 Feb 2012)

I'm not saying that it is a right, or an entitlement. No more than giving farmers subsidies to make it profitable enough to stay on the farm. You can look at it as a disincentive to move, or you can look at it as an incentive to keep at a way of life that normally wouldn't pay the bills. By the way, I believe that the EI should be enough to get seasonal workers by, not let them live in McMansions, drive new 4x4's every 2 years, and own 1 each of every man toy. If that is what they want, move to where the real money is.


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## larry Strong (9 Feb 2012)

captloadie said:
			
		

> I'm not saying that it is a right, or an entitlement. No more than giving farmers subsidies to make it profitable enough to stay on the farm. You can look at it as a disincentive to move, or you can look at it as an *incentive to keep at a way of life that normally wouldn't pay the bills*. By the way, I believe that the EI should be enough to get seasonal workers by, not let them live in McMansions, drive new 4x4's every 2 years, and own 1 each of every man toy. If that is what they want, move to where the real money is.



In my eyes you have called it an "entitlement". Why should I pay for someone to sit at home for a half year or better.....Here's a real life situation. My current job working in a fab shop building drilling rigs pays just enough to keep my nose above water, but I am home everynight. And I have a house, 2 vehicles, both are 10 years or older, and no man toys except for a 5th wheel RV. All paid for except the house. After working the patch for 30 years I am going back to make better money, and in all likelyhood working away from home again. 

If the job does not pay the bills then get a second job or move and find another. No one should have to pay for other people who feel they are *entitled* to sit around till the next season comes around. People don't like that thought....tuff, suck it up muffin and get a job


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## Edward Campbell (9 Feb 2012)

captloadie said:
			
		

> Coming from a family that had on occasion to rely on EI to get by, I find it personally offensive that they expect people who are actually working in resource areas (fishing, lumber, farming) to pick up and move. Most of the workers that are "seasonal" work long hard hours, eking by a living, just like their forefathers did. But hey, we could just tie up all the small fishing boats, put away the chainsaws, and let large conglomerates take over.
> 
> Maybe someone should write an article about making welfare cases move to find jobs, and maybe having to actually work for their money.
> 
> ...




I agree with Larry Strong.

I, personally, don't like agricultural subsidies any more than I like any other government _intrusions_ into the market, but I accept them, as I accept EI, because we live and trade in a very imperfect world. Agricultural subsidies and EI share one feature: they take money out of our pockets, your and mine - through either taxes or (too high) prices - and give it to someone else for reasons that do not provide any net benefit to the "commonwealth." While I accept both I believe that both can be 'shaved' down to better suit Canada in the 21st century - will some people like Québec dairy farmers, Newfoundland fishermen, Ontario egg producers and New Brunswick forestry workers have to earn less, or work two or three jobs per year, or move to Saskatchewan or Alberta? _Yes._ Will some of them actually suffer? _Yes._ Will some riot on the streets and commit acts of vandalism on Parliament Hill in Ottawa? _Yes?_ Does any of that make the current agricultural subsidies and EI worthwhile? _*No.*_


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## Infanteer (9 Feb 2012)

captloadie said:
			
		

> or you can look at it as an incentive to keep at a way of life that normally wouldn't pay the bills.



Why would we want to subsidize a way of life that normally wouldn't pay the bills?


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## Furniture (9 Feb 2012)

If people have a serious issue with the way that seasonal workers receive EI during the off season, they should be prepared to do without the products and services offered by those same seasonally employed people. A perfect example is fish, expect to pay far more for fresh seafood and to have far less available on the market. For some it's a minor inconvenience, but for those people who make their living selling the fish it's a big deal. I'm sure people from other areas have examples they can give as well. 

It's all well and good to have a nation of oil refiners and high tech manufactures, but even they need to eat. Cutting out the safety net that allows primary food producers like farmers and fishermen to operate and provide somewhat stable and secure food production is a bad idea.


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## SeaKingTacco (9 Feb 2012)

WeatherdoG said:
			
		

> If people have a serious issue with the way that seasonal workers receive EI during the off season, they should be prepared to do without the products and services offered by those same seasonally employed people. A perfect example is fish, expect to pay far more for fresh seafood and to have far less available on the market. For some it's a minor inconvenience, but for those people who make their living selling the fish it's a big deal. I'm sure people from other areas have examples they can give as well.
> 
> It's all well and good to have a nation of oil refiners and high tech manufactures, but even they need to eat. Cutting out the safety net that allows primary food producers like farmers and fishermen to operate and provide somewhat stable and secure food production is a bad idea.



Perhaps the model we have been using for the fishing industry no longer works?  Many farmers in western Canada have off farm income (some of them in the oilsands, at significant distant from the farm).  Why can Atlantic Canadian fisherman also not be expected to get jobs ashore for the 41 weeks a year that they are not fishing?  What is so magic about that industry?  I'm not trying to be a jerk- I am asking an honest question.


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## Furniture (9 Feb 2012)

The answer to your question is that many of them do work for much of the rest of the year. Not all of them of course, but many do. 

Lots go west and work in the oil patch, some do construction, and some draw EI. Not necessarily because they don't like work or don't want to work, but packing up the family and moving to Alberta to work in an industry that is very boom and bust doesn't make much sense to many. Particularly when ever extra cent they would make doing that would be spent trying to afford housing and food. Not to mention that the gear and licenses required to fish cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and most of them are not prepared to walk away from that at a loss to work labour.


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## SeaKingTacco (9 Feb 2012)

WeatherdoG said:
			
		

> The answer to your question is that many of them do work for much of the rest of the year. Not all of them of course, but many do.
> 
> Lots go west and work in the oil patch, some do construction, and some draw EI. Not necessarily because they don't like work or don't want to work, but packing up the family and moving to Alberta to work in an industry that is *very boom and bust * doesn't make much sense to many. Particularly when ever extra cent they would make doing that would be spent trying to afford housing and food. Not to mention that the gear and licenses required to fish cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and most of them are not prepared to walk away from that at a loss to work labour.



I had to laugh about the boom/bust part!

Again, without being a jerk, I have to wonder why the EI system should be used to keep someone in Eastern Passage NS not working for 40 weeks per year, when the oilfield worker from Red Deer AB is not allowed to do the same thing?

I tend towards saying- make the EI rules the same for the whole country and let the chips fall where they may in terms of labour force mobility after that.


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## Furniture (9 Feb 2012)

I understand where you are coming from and I can't say I disagree, I'm simply stating the reasons why people use the system the way they do. 

As far as boom/bust goes, I know several guys from my own home village who went to the oil patch and were sent home as soon as things slowed down. Not a big deal when you have a job back home and a place to live. If you sold your home and moved to Red Deer based on your awesome new job and got laid off a few weeks later because there is a global recession it's a slightly bigger deal. Yes it's a bit of an exception, but when it's you that loses your home and good credit that doesn't matter much.

As I said earlier, make the system the same for everybody. When you do though, be prepared to deal with the unintended consequences.


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## Edward Campbell (9 Feb 2012)

WeatherdoG said:
			
		

> I understand where you are coming from and I can't say I disagree, I'm simply stating the reasons why people use the system the way they do.
> 
> As far as boom/bust goes, I know several guys from my own home village who went to the oil patch and were sent home as soon as things slowed down. Not a big deal when you have a job back home and a place to live. If you sold your home and moved to Red Deer based on your awesome new job and got laid off a few weeks later because there is a global recession it's a slightly bigger deal. Yes it's a bit of an exception, but when it's you that loses your home and good credit that doesn't matter much.
> 
> As I said earlier, make the system the same for everybody. When you do though, be prepared to deal with the unintended consequences.




You're right, WeatherdoG, there would be (notice, please, I avoided saying "will be" because I doubt the political will to overhaul EI exists) unintended and unforeseen political, economic and social consequences, some of them unfortunate.

By the way, your point about some food prices is taken but I suspect the industry can and would adapt quickly. One of the advantages of removing agricultural subsidies is that it makes the entire industry more competitive - and yes it is an industry, not a "rural way of life." With special reference to the fisheries: maybe a price hike will actually help to manage fish stocks more effectively.


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## Brad Sallows (9 Feb 2012)

My grandfather, the salmon troller, and a handful of my other relatives who spent their lives in fisheries all managed to make a year's pay during the seasons in which they worked.  So that's one lame excuse blown away.

My various great-uncles who worked in mining and forestry managed to make a living at it.  So that's a couple more shown the door.

If one seasonal job doesn't pay the bills for a year, then it is necessary to find other seasonal work to complement the first one during the other seasons.  Otherwise, EI is just a wage subsidy.  I can think of no valid reason why some employers should be subsidized and some should not.  If planting trees during the summer can't carry you through the rest of the year, you need to find more work in the fall, winter, and spring.

If EI were truly insurance, the rules would go something like this:
- people at higher risk of unemployment would pay higher premiums
- benefits would be uniform - a function of time employed and income earned - instead of especially peachy in certain regions
- the qualifying condition of unemployment would revolve chiefly around an abrupt and unexpected termination of employment, not a predetermined end date or end of contract

The minimum qualifying time for EI should be two years.  Termination after any shorter length of continuous employment should result simply in refund of all premiums paid during that period.

EI has become a convenient fund for all sorts of benefits not related to sudden loss of employment.  That needs to end; those programs should either be dropped or funded out of general revenue.  EI premiums should drop to a level commensurate with the true insurance program which would remain after all the other pandering is refactored out.


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## Redeye (9 Feb 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> You're right, WeatherdoG, there would be (notice, please, I avoided saying "will be" because I doubt the political will to overhaul EI exists) unintended and unforeseen political, economic and social consequences, some of them unfortunate.
> 
> By the way, your point about some food prices is taken but I suspect the industry can and would adapt quickly. One of the advantages of removing agricultural subsidies is that it makes the entire industry more competitive - and yes it is an industry, not a "rural way of life." With special reference to the fisheries: maybe a price hike will actually help to manage fish stocks more effectively.



I suspect the industry will adapt as agriculture has. Seasonal work will wind up being done by foreign workers who will work for comparatively small wages, who will come up for the season, work, and return home. I'm not sure that we'd save much money essentially depopulating parts of the country where seasonal industries are the norm. But I don't see why, on the other hand, we'd want to subsidize people living in remote fishing towns forever either.

Not something with easy answers, really.


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## Furniture (9 Feb 2012)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> My grandfather, the salmon troller, and a handful of my other relatives who spent their lives in fisheries all managed to make a year's pay during the seasons in which they worked.  So that's one lame excuse blown away.
> 
> My various great-uncles who worked in mining and forestry managed to make a living at it.  So that's a couple more shown the door.



My family has been fishing in North America since at least the mid 1800's and likely before that. My Grandfather was a fisherman, and lived on his fishing all year too. Of course he didn't have a TV or a bathroom in his house either... Fishing in the modern world is not fishing in the the 60's, much like farming has changed in that time too. 

Fishing requires that the person who is the captain of the vessel have intimate knowledge of the grounds he is fishing.  Unlike farming though, one fisherman cannot have multiple vessels, and must be present in the boat when it is being used to fish. So unless the laws regulating it change drastically(which they won`t) it must be done by owner operators on a small scale. 

It is a problem with no easy answers, and that likely won`t even be addressed for many years. In reality it will likely fix itself as fewer people enter the fishery due to the ow pay and uncertain outcomes.


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## Kat Stevens (10 Feb 2012)

Seriously, where do you people live that you can just "get an off season job" ?  My work is seasonal, it pays well, and I pay a correspondingly high amount of taxes, so you can fuck right off with the "no economic benefit to Canada" dookie as well.  I paid into EI since I was 16, so 34 years worth, and I claimed for the first time when I was sent home from my prior job for a year. I felt bad for that, embarrassed in fact.  Guess what?  I'm over it.  Good for you folks with steady year round jobs, enjoy them while they last, you could find yourself in shitty circumstances very quickly, and I hope you all remember what you said here when you do.


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## Brad Sallows (11 Feb 2012)

I do know of fishermen who own multiple vessels; they just don't skipper them all.  If our experience is west coast and east coast fisheries, respectively, there may be some significant differences of which we are unaware.  But while I am fully aware that fishermen in the west can and do claim EI, it is a fact that many make a year's living from their seasonal work or find other work off-season.

I agree that if you are sent home, laid off, fired, whatever, you should collect on the insurance.  That is what it should be insurance against.  It should not be a subsidy for wages or a pot for other benefits.  Whether or not those other benefits should exist is a separate question from how they should be funded.  They should be funded out of general revenues.  If we are going to prop up seasonal industries, pay for mat leave, pay for care of relatives, etc, those should be programs funded by taxpayers collectively, not the smaller fraction of people who happen to be employed.


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## Redeye (11 Feb 2012)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> I do know of fishermen who own multiple vessels; they just don't skipper them all.  If our experience is west coast and east coast fisheries, respectively, there may be some significant differences of which we are unaware.  But while I am fully aware that fishermen in the west can and do claim EI, it is a fact that many make a year's living from their seasonal work or find other work off-season.
> 
> I agree that if you are sent home, laid off, fired, whatever, you should collect on the insurance.  That is what it should be insurance against.  It should not be a subsidy for wages or a pot for other benefits.  Whether or not those other benefits should exist is a separate question from how they should be funded.  They should be funded out of general revenues.  If we are going to prop up seasonal industries, pay for mat leave, pay for care of relatives, etc, those should be programs funded by taxpayers collectively, not the smaller fraction of people who happen to be employed.



Most people who pay taxes are employed, given that they have to have income to to pay tax on. Of course, pensioners do pay tax without being employed, but I'm okay with them not paying EI premiums.


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## a_majoor (11 Feb 2012)

The current edition of the National Post (11 Feb 2012) is devoted to the issue of immigration and the various changes that are coming to our society and country because of it. Multiple articles and opinion pieces. Well worth the read.


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## SeaKingTacco (11 Feb 2012)

Kat Stevens said:
			
		

> Seriously, where do you people live that you can just "get an off season job" ?  My work is seasonal, it pays well, and I pay a correspondingly high amount of taxes, so you can frig right off with the "no economic benefit to Canada" dookie as well.  I paid into EI since I was 16, so 34 years worth, and I claimed for the first time when I was sent home from my prior job for a year. I felt bad for that, embarrassed in fact.  Guess what?  I'm over it.  Good for you folks with steady year round jobs, enjoy them while they last, you could find yourself in shitty circumstances very quickly, and I hope you all remember what you said here when you do.



Kat, as a young 2Lt, I was posted to NB.  I made about $23k (late 1980s).  Yet, I could not help notice the lobster fishermen who worked 10 week season, made $40-60k in that 10 week period, had nice trucks, satellite TV- all the toys, but collected UI For the rest of the year (maybe another $10k, in those days ).  There was no way they were paying in to the system anything like what they were pulling out of he system.  I felt like a bit of tool paying UI premiums that I knew I could never collect on while guys making 2-3 times what I was making spent most of the year , every year, collecting.

My point is, if we treated this like a true insurance system, your premiums should drop the longer you worked (demonstrating that you were a good risk).  If you collected often, your premiums should go up, to reflect that you were a poor risk.

The Fact that you work in a seasonal industry is great.  Just don't try and pretend full time workers in other industries aren't subsidizing your lifestyle.


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## Kat Stevens (11 Feb 2012)

I actually subsidized my own lifestyle by paying in to it for over 30 years, but thanks all the same for the condescension, I've missed that since I left the army.  I work from March to whenever the ground freezes, usually December, so you can take your 10 weeks and shove those too.  I could get a McJob for 3 months, but it wouldn't pay for the fuel I'd burn every day getting back and forth to do it.  Oh, right, I should just move to where I can work all year, until the next round of "go home" starts.  You people have been in for too long, civil servants and retirees included.  Come on out here into the world and try it for a while, all easier said than done.


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## SeaKingTacco (11 Feb 2012)

Hey man, good on you for collecting EI.  You are only following the rules, as written.

Just don't try and pretend you "earned" it.


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## Fishbone Jones (11 Feb 2012)

Easy guys. Let's not get personal.

Both of you have good discussion points. Work around those.

Milnet.ca Staff


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## Kat Stevens (11 Feb 2012)

removed, knee jerk reaction, apologies all around.


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## SeaKingTacco (11 Feb 2012)

recceguy said:
			
		

> Easy guys. Let's not get personal.
> 
> Both of you have good discussion points. Work around those.
> 
> Milnet.ca Staff



Ack.  At no time was I intending on being disrespectful to Kat.  I apologize if I came off that way.


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## GAP (11 Feb 2012)

Kat Stevens said:
			
		

> removed, knee jerk reaction, apologies all around.



You have good points, and from a personal perspective your arguments have weight, but from an overarching policy originally intended to get votes, there needs to be a rework......probably not tieing it into EI, but a program of its' own.


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## Cloud Cover (12 Feb 2012)

SeaKingTacco said:
			
		

> Hey man, good on you for collecting EI.  You are only following the rules, as written.
> 
> Just don't try and pretend you "earned" it.



Well, by taking employment in the first place guys like Kat certainly earned the right to pay for EI, (along with all the other taxes they have a right to pay!), therefore it is "insurance" that is earned and not simply granted. IMO the problem is public nature to link EI in Canada as a social benefit of the welfare state, consequently there are too many social objectives tied to EI, some of which are quite worthy and noble but are funded from the wrong pool. There is simply too much politics in EI, it could be more even handed and efficient.  The CAW in some auto plants, for example, had a very efficient supplememtary system that kicked in for certain circumstances. Im not sure what the models were, but bottom line is there are alternative systems that may have good practices that may have a fit in this system. 

As for the threads regarding Caterpillar EMD, my very good friend and neighbour, 20 years on the job, blue collar, honest god fearing Conservative who paid into EI all his working life now finds that very system has let him down. He was in my house crying yesterday while the real estate agent held an open house because he cant make the next 3 years of his mortgage payments, and keep his kids in university.   I am trying my hardest to keep this 46 year old man positive and frankly, from blowing his brains out or driving off a bridge. So for those of you who think there are easy solutions to the problem of income support,  you need to understand there is a human, community and social well being dimension to being unemployed. There are many things our economic and social systems can and should do to help out as our country de-industrializes from heavy manufacturing so rapidly.   The oil sands and related spin off industry simply does not have the capacity to employ everybody or for that matter to sustain our national economy.


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## SeaKingTacco (12 Feb 2012)

whiskey,

I firmly believe there is a place for Employment Insurance.  I just happen to feel that the current system is a mess.

Sorry about your friend and EMD.  Seriously- he should look west.  You would not believe the high paying jobs out this way that are going unfilled for lack of a sentient being with a pulse.


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## a_majoor (14 Feb 2012)

Diane Francis on how we should be following up the China mission:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/02/10/its-time-for-canada-to-play-trade-hardball/



> *It’s time for Canada to play trade hardball*
> Diane Francis  Feb 10, 2012 – 6:30 PM ET | Last Updated: Feb 10, 2012 5:51 PM ET
> 
> Comments Email Twitter The Prime Minister’s visit to China netted more than a couple of pandas for a decade. It got Washington’s attention.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (15 Feb 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> At last!
> 
> A new, Conservative, social policy framework is taking shape, according to this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> ...




And more on this, living within our means, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/adam-radwanski/ontario-gears-up-for-a-different-life-post-drummond/article2338738/


> Ontario gears up for a different life post-Drummond
> 
> ADAM RADWANSKI
> 
> ...




I think Canadians, even smug, complacent, Ontarians are ready for the "news" that Prime Minister Harper and Premier McGuinty are delivering (the latter through Don Drummond): we must recast our plans and programmes because we must learn from Greece _et al_ that we cannot borrow indefinitely.

My guess is that many (not most, but enough, in any event) Ontarians are ready to _go down all of those painful roads simultaneously_ in order to restore fiscal sustainability for future generations. My suspicion is that Mr. Drummond will have crafted his recommendations with great care - no one or even any half dozen will be political "deal breakers," it is only in the totality that we will find _a)_ real pain, and _b)_ real "redemption."

I also suspect that other jurisdictions, including in Canada (_Hallo Québec!_), the USA and Europe will be watching this exercise with great interest. Ontario is big, it is important, it has an opportunity to work its way back from the brink; it need not follow the McGuinty's current, easy, popular _Greek_ path to fiscal disaster; it can follow a new, harder but bearable plan back to economic and social self sufficiency.


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## GAP (15 Feb 2012)

I don't think it's in McGuinty's genes. It will have to be done by someone else after Ont. crashes, but I don't see the PC's with their present leader being the ones.....they are so hungry to get in power they are promising the impossible.


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## Edward Campbell (15 Feb 2012)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Diane Francis on how we *should* be following up the China mission:
> 
> http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/02/10/its-time-for-canada-to-play-trade-hardball/




How we most likely will be following up the China mission:






Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Ottawa Citizen_
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/editorial-cartoons/index.html


----------



## a_majoor (15 Feb 2012)

Too true, alas...


----------



## Edward Campbell (15 Feb 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> And more on this, living within our means, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/adam-radwanski/ontario-gears-up-for-a-different-life-post-drummond/article2338738/
> 
> ...




And here, in his own words, reproduced under the Fair Dealiong provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is Don Drummond's overview of his _prescription_ for Ontario:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/growth-wont-save-ontario-this-time-only-reform-will/article2339376/


> Growth won’t save Ontario this time. Only reform will
> 
> DON DRUMMOND
> 
> ...




It is reported that, taken together, these recommendations amount to finding ways to spend 16% less (after a few years) on individual Ontarians. It seems like a lot but Drummond suggests that we can spend a lot less without inflicting  real hardship. One hopes McGuinty will stare down government unions, special interests, political professionals and a media that will make hay manufacture dissent and controversy out of every cut, and do what's right. One hopes ... but perhaps it just demonstrates the triumph of hope over experience.


----------



## Edward Campbell (15 Feb 2012)

The Drummond Commission (it was a team effort) report is online here.


----------



## mariomike (15 Feb 2012)

> The Drummond Commission (it was a team effort) report is online here.



Recommendation 5-100: "Adopt the Nova Scotia model in which emergency medical technicians provide home care when not on emergency calls; this requires integrating municipal and provincial funding structures."

We never had time for that stuff:
“They’re not seeing any downtime on their shifts, they’re going from one call to the next, they’re being forced to work overtime at the end of their shifts, and in many cases they’re not getting their lunches.”
Toronto EMS Chief Bruce Farr 
Jan 24 2011


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## larry Strong (15 Feb 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> ....One hopes McGuinty will stare down government unions, special interests, political professionals and a media that will make hay manufacture dissent and controversy out of every cut, and do what's right. One hopes ... but perhaps it just demonstrates the triumph of hope over experience.



I seriously doubt that Dalton McGuinty has the spine to follow through with the cuts needed.


----------



## Edward Campbell (16 Feb 2012)

A fair comment, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/cartoon/editorial-cartoons-february-2012/article2321277/


----------



## GAP (16 Feb 2012)

Feds mull 10 per cent cut to Parliament's $585M budget
Article Link

CTVNews.ca Staff

Date: Wed. Feb. 15 2012 10:00 PM ET

Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to trim operating costs in Ottawa, and Conservative MPs held a secret meeting on Wednesday to look at how they can curb spending -- including parliamentary perks that some want to protect.

While MPs at the meeting weren't keen to reveal what was discussed, it appears the government could cut up to 10 per cent of the parliamentary budget, CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife reported.

The annual budget for the Parliament of Canada in this fiscal year is $586,331,000. That includes operating costs for the Senate, the House of Commons, the Library of Parliament.

A 10-per-cent cut could mean about $58.6 million in savings for taxpayers.

While it's expected that MP salaries of $157,731 will be frozen this year, some other key cuts could include:

    A scaling back of MP office budgets
    A drop on round-trip flights for MPs from 64 to 52
    Eliminating all business-class travel on flights

Tony Clement, president of the Treasury Board, has publicly mused that any cuts should be balanced.

"You have to be fair to the employee, which in this case is the MPs, and you have to be fair to the taxpayers," he said.

But Parliament is the only federal department that doesn't publicly post its expenditures. Other departments are required to make their costs public. And the meeting called by Prime Minister Stephen Harper took place behind closed doors.

Insiders say that Labour Minister Lisa Raitt teared up at last week's caucus meetings because she is concerned that fewer free flights would mean less time with her family and her young children.

And for once, it appears that MPs from all sides of the political spectrum are united against serious cuts.
Little More on link


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## a_majoor (16 Feb 2012)

Many Canadians seem to be onside with spending cuts; perhaps we will see more than the timid $4 billion being looked for so far:

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/02/15/canadians-support-cuts-to-federal-workforce-poll



> *Canadians support cuts to federal workforce: Poll*
> 
> By Mark Dunn ,Senior National Reporter
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (17 Feb 2012)

This report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, indicates (to me, anyway) that Drummond is on the right track:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/drummond-report-gets-cool-reception-from-ontario-businesses/article2341350/


> Drummond report gets cool reception from Ontario businesses
> 
> RICHARD BLACKWELL
> 
> ...




First: There is a veritable hodge-podge of "business supoort" programmes at the national, regional, provincial and local levels - many overlap, many are outdated, many are counterproductive or conflict with others.

Second: I will be happy when everyone, from the boardrooms on Bay Street to the homeless "advocates," including McGuinty's own cabinet, has problems with Drummond's plan - that will mean his proposed cuts are going to work.


----------



## GAP (17 Feb 2012)

> First: There is a veritable hodge-podge of "business supoort" programmes at the national, regional, provincial and local levels - many overlap, many are outdated, many are counterproductive or conflict with others.
> 
> Second: I will be happy when everyone, from the boardrooms on Bay Street to the homeless "advocates," including McGuinty's own cabinet, has problems with Drummond's plan - that will mean his proposed cuts are going to work.



Now is an excellent time to massively reduce all "business suport " programs. At all levels. You are never going to find a better atomosphere of acceptance and justification to back out of a lot of these programs who have outlived their initial usefulness, if they ever had one. 

Then start working on the social programs. Yesterday there was an announcement by another of the "Kum by ah" group that minimum wage needs to be upped until people are earning $50,000/yr....this would give them food, shelter and the internet......ah......ok....... :


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## GAP (17 Feb 2012)

Terence Corcoran: The Big McGuinty switch
Terence Corcoran  Feb 16, 2012 
Article Link

Despite report’s spending focus, tax increases are on the way

Ontario, get ready for The Big McGuinty. The 562-page report from the government-appointed Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, chaired by economist Don Drummond, has all the makings of a diversionary shell game in which everybody is directed to follow the pea of spending cuts while the real game is something else.

With attention now focused on carving Mr. Drummond’s 362 recommended slices off the great Ontario spending bologna, the real bait-and-switch objective, The Big McGuinty of this giant exercise in fiscal self-flagellation, is something else altogether: tax increases.

Does anybody seriously think the Liberal government of the Rev. Dalton McGuinty, after a decade of installing feel-good spending increases and extravagant policy schemes, is suddenly going to roll it all back and reverse a decade of ideological commitment to government intervention and liberal spending programs?

The Drummond report would require policy-backtracking on a vast scale. Somewhere in the near-eternal labyrinth of the Drummond report there must be evidence that the McGuinty’s Liberal government did something right over the last decade. If there is, I haven’t found it yet.

Aside from setting Canada’s largest province on a death spiralish plunge into what could become a $30-billion deficit by 2017-18, and a debt load of $411-billion equal to 51% of GDP — establishing the McGuinty Liberals as neo-Greek fiscal managers — the government comes off as the regime that couldn’t do anything right.

From health care to electricity regulation and energy policy, from transit planning and business subsidies, Ontario emerges as a province in need of a top-to-bottom big fix, a revamp of every policy, priority and plan on file in the bureaucracy.

Ontario spends more on health care than other jurisdictions but gets fewer results. Its electricity sector, with its feed-in-tariff subsidies, is driving electricity costs higher. The government’s sneaky energy price rebate, deceptively named the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit — designed to hide the fact that wind and solar subsidies are driving electricity costs skyward — was also dismissed by the Drummond commission as wrongheaded.

The fiscal gap runs to $30-billion by 2017-8, or up to 25% of total program spending. Even if Mr. Drummond’s economic projections are extreme — they look to be more pessimistic than recent projections by the Conference Board of Canada — spending cuts of that magnitude seem beyond the capacity of any government, let alone one of Mr. McGuinty’s persuasion.

Will this government really give up subsidies to business and job creation? During the last election, Mr. McGuinty personally attended to the grant of cash to a pizza-making company, one of scores of election giveaways. Said Mr. Drummond of the McGuinty business subsidies: “The government’s business support programs require a reset in light of Ontario’s fiscal and economic challenges. If we were to design business support programs from scratch, they would not look like what we have now.”
More on link


----------



## larry Strong (17 Feb 2012)

> All supports should end after four years, then be renewed only if they are working, the report recommended.



I will admit that I am not a business person, however I feel that if you can't make it on your own as a business after 4 years, either not enough buyers are interested in your product, and you might want to consider scaling back the size of your business, or your business plan is not thought out properly.



> And the suggestion that Ontario cut its tax support for horse racing and eliminate the sharing of slot machine revenue drew howls of outrage from the racing industry.




According to the link posted, just under 5% of the population in Ontario, approximately 1 in 21 have a gambling addiction problem in Ontario. So would fewer race tracks and casino's really be a bad thing?

http://www.adstv.on.ca/gambling_adults.htm


----------



## Redeye (17 Feb 2012)

Larry Strong said:
			
		

> I will admit that I am not a business person, however I feel that if you can't make it on your own as a business after 4 years, either not enough buyers are interested in your product, and you might want to consider scaling back the size of your business, or your business plan is not thought out properly.
> 
> 
> According to the link posted, just under 5% of the population in Ontario, approximately 1 in 21 have a gambling addiction problem in Ontario. So would fewer race tracks and casino's really be a bad thing?
> ...



Gambling revenue is one of those things where the cost/benefit issue seems trickier than normal. Nova Scotia has a gambling problem, the rate of addition according to a 2007 report was around six percent - but it also supplies 2.5% of the province's budget - $175 million isn't to be scoffed at. Can we afford to do without it? Yes. Most likely. But it'll possibly sting. I wonder what the social costs balance it out to.


----------



## Edward Campbell (17 Feb 2012)

Jeffrey Simpson adds his voice to those supporting both _restraints_ *and* tax increases in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/ontario-can-no-longer-hide-from-taxes-restraint/article2341000/


> Ontario can no longer hide from taxes, restraint
> 
> JEFFREY SIMPSON
> 
> ...




It is not clear that tax hikes are necessary.

We should believe Drummond - he has _waaay_ more economic credibility than McGuinty/Duncan - and implement the spending cuts, including the payoffs to unions programmes, like all day kindergarten, Duncan has already said will stay in place. Then, when the cuts are in place, we can see if tax increases are necessary. Raising taxes just gives politicians room to buy your vote with my money.


----------



## Edward Campbell (18 Feb 2012)

I fear this column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ is a realistic appraisal of Ontario's near term future:

(My _*emphasis*_ added)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/can-dalton-mcguinty-morph-into-mr-mean/article2342608/


> Can Dalton McGuinty morph into Mr. Mean?
> 
> MARGARET WENTE
> 
> ...




It will be harder and harder to do the longer we postpone the inevitable paying of the piper.


----------



## Brad Sallows (18 Feb 2012)

Ironically, one of the reasons teachers in BC continue to assert their demands is that they feel they are underpaid in comparison with Ontario teachers.


----------



## Kirkhill (18 Feb 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> It will be harder and harder to do the longer we postpone the inevitable paying of the piper.



While it may be harder for society at large, the longer that the inevitable is delayed, it seems to me to be an unfortunate fact that the politician and the survivalist share a common hidden joy at the prospect of the end of days.  As the European Politician implies, as long as the status quo holds the status quo will hold.  Until such time as the status quo fails nothing is possible.  Once the status quo does fail everything is possible.

The risk for the politician is to be the one on watch when everything fails.  The reward will go to "the other guy".  

Anyone for a game of "Hot Potato"?


----------



## Edward Campbell (20 Feb 2012)

A reminder about why Ontario's woes matter to all Canadians and a look at the perverse effects of "fiscal federalism" in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

My *emphasis*added
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/other-provinces-have-no-cause-to-gloat-over-ontarios-economic-woes/article2343676/


> Other provinces have no cause to gloat over Ontario’s economic woes
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> 
> ...




'Nuff said, I think.


----------



## Haletown (20 Feb 2012)

Dalton must be taking lessons  from Obama in The Management of Public Finances.

He's doing the same thing, pandering to public service unions and organized labor.  The only difference is Dalton is jogging down the road of fiscal insanity to Hell, while Obamassiah is sprinting.


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## Kirkhill (20 Feb 2012)

> Alberta defaulted on its debt during the Depression. In more recent times, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland came close. If any province found itself unable to service its debt, “we explicitly assume that there is a high probability that the federal government would help the province,” said Jennifer Wong, assistant vice-president at Moody’s Investors Service, in an interview



There's the difference between Canada's dollar and the EU's euro.  We are on the hook for each other's debt.  Thankfully.  Because in so doing we spread the risk around.

Having said that, that doesn't mean we can't whinge, moan and gripe about the idiots that wilfully cause their own problems - and - hopefully - convince them of the error of their ways.

Someone, somewhere once told me a story about seven fat years followed by seven lean years and storing up corn during the fat times for the lean times...... but that was a lifetime ago.


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## GAP (20 Feb 2012)

well there's always family.............


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## Edward Campbell (21 Feb 2012)

Well, the faint hope disappears, according to a report in the _Ottawa Citizen_ which has Premier McGuinty saying that while the Drummond report is a "helpful road map," he will not implement all the recommendation and he will not raise taxes.

Article link

The Drummond report says _"the province must implement all of the 362 recommendations laid out in the massive cost-cutting plan if it wants to "just make" its target of eliminating a projected $30.2-billion deficit by 2017-18."_

Since McGuinty says he will not implement all 362 recommendations nor raise taxes he is also saying, implicitly, that a balanced budget is not in Ontario's future - Ontario will, in other words, edge closer and closer to a lower credit rating (higher cost of borrowing even more money) and default.


----------



## Kirkhill (21 Feb 2012)

How long before McGuinty does a Campbell and decide he has "done enough"?  Sinecure as Ontario's High Commissioner to somewhere or other?


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## a_majoor (21 Feb 2012)

I think the more probable outcome will be the NDP joins forces with the Ontario Liberals. The Drummond report is a repudiation of all of Dalton McGuinty's policies and programs, so to use the report is to basically admit "hey, I was totally out to lunch these last eight years..."

Preimier McGuinty has never been shy of trying to cover a spending problem with more taxes, and the NDP veiw the report as a joke, with the leader clearly stating the problem is there is simply not enough revenue, so we have a meeting of kindred spirits. 

I rather doubt that Tim Hudac has the will to force an election (and a possible coalition of the free spending makes that unlikely), nor has he demonstrated the spine required to march forward with something like the Drummond Report (otherwise he would have fought the election using his own version of the report), so things are looking very poorly for Ontario for the next decade or so.


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## Kirkhill (21 Feb 2012)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> ....
> Preimier McGuinty has never been shy of trying to cover a spending problem with more taxes, and the NDP veiw the report as a joke, with the leader clearly stating the problem is there is simply not enough revenue, so we have a meeting of kindred spirits.
> 
> ......



Blood from stone?


----------



## Edward Campbell (22 Feb 2012)

There is one thing about which the _Good Grey Globe's_ national affairs columnist Jeffrey Simpson and I agree: Canada has a _productivity_ problem. He outlines part of it in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/exploiting-canadas-resources-can-be-a-fools-game/article2345076/


> Exploiting Canada’s resources can be a fool’s game
> 
> JEFFREY SIMPSON
> 
> ...




Despite his unnecessary and uncalled for anti-Harper dig, Simpson gets most of it right.

At the risk of repeating myself: low productivity is not the workers' fault, although *trade unions* that try to stifle productivity in order to _featherbed_ jobs *are part of the problem*. Governments are only a minor part of the problem: they _*can*_ to better in some tax policies (making it cheaper/easier to import technology and tooling, for example), some _support_ programmes (to offset those put in place by our trading partners) and promoting freer and freer trade, even in agriculture and food, and better and better focused R&D support. The main problem is a risk averse business culture.

But: our resource base does provide a nice cushion and we should not stop or even slow exploiting it. In fact we can, should be establishing new, _productive_ resource extraction and distribution industries.


----------



## a_majoor (22 Feb 2012)

We may have a twofer here:

Prime Minister Harper suggested immigration reform must be on the table in his Davros speech.

We have a declining population of working age people due to the demographic bust, and are already hurting for skilled workers now

The United States is suffering an unemployment crisis with something like 11% unemployment and 15% when you add involuntarily underemployed.

Solution; adjust immigration policy to favour skille American workers. We already admit @200,000 people a year, why not have half of the slots come from the United States. (I seem to recall @ 30,000 Americans/year come already). We will get skilled workers from a culturally similar background, and they will get a chance to work at high wage jobs and repair their personal fortunes. The hidden benefit is they will also be bringing their workplace culture as well, bootstrapping some of the productivity issues we see here.

For people looking for a checksum; consider Alberta is the only province which was largely settlled from the United States, and has a very distinctive culture from the rest of Canada. Albertans have embraced a much greater willingness to take risks, and have prospered far beyond their size within Canada.


----------



## ballz (22 Feb 2012)

The only thing I wonder about for you idea Thucyclides (which I think is a good one) is that I was under the impression that the US, despite it's unemployment rate, also has a shortage of skilled workers, especially blue-collar / trades / etc which is largely what Alberta is hurting for.


----------



## a_majoor (22 Feb 2012)

Which is why this stands as a "maybe". 

Still, with something like 39 million Americans unemployed there must be some percentage of skilled workers in a pool of that size with the training and aptitude needed, and who would be willing to come over to the Great White North.


----------



## ballz (22 Feb 2012)

The aptitude for sure... one thing about the big oil companies in Alberta (especially, because oil sands and the drilling are labour intensive) is that they don't only need skilled labour, the amount of money they are paying just to get grunt labour is insane. As an 18 and 19 year old in Fort Mac I was getting paid $26/hr (with as much OT as you want... time-and-half, double-time, and on site triple-time on Stat holidays) as a first-year apprentice, even though by boss knew I was not going to be there for the long-haul, and just needed me to be an extra set of hands / set of clamps for his journeyman. They are paying the same kind of money literally for a "general labourer."

Syncrude/Suncor/CNRL/Albian Sands (Shell) were all hiring people my age as unskilled workers and signing them to huge retention packages to train them into operators of various equipment.

However, these companies were also bringing foreign companies in because it was cheaper. I'm not sure if there is a way for the government to advertise to Americans to come up to Fort McMurray and actually get hired, instead of having the private companies pay for their own advertising campaigns in the south. Perhaps you won't agree with this, but they *could* agree to subsidize advertisement expenses that are geared towards advertising to the labour market south of the border what kind of opportunities are available up here.


----------



## a_majoor (22 Feb 2012)

Or you could just write to all your friends in the states  

Canada did use government agencies to bring in the last great wave of immigration in the late 1800's early 1900's, so there is a precedent there. You do have to wonder how the word gets out to 200,000 people in India, China, Lower Togoland etc. that Canada is wide open without overt action by government "settlement agents".

There is nothing wrong with companies putting out "help wanted" ads in US publications or web sites, and if the situation is desperate for labour, they will do what it takes without waiting for some government bureaucrat or agency to vet the ad for English/French content, posting to under represented groups or any other number of considerations dear to the bureaucratic heart.

The real action needs to take place in terms of the government identifying and fast tracking potential immigrants who fulfill needs in the Canadian labour market.


----------



## a_majoor (23 Feb 2012)

While resources may be a "fools game" in the long run, in the short term it is probably what we will need to generate wealth to pay down the debt and unfunded pension liabilities (totalling $ 1 trillion Cdn). Saskatchewan seems idealy situated to become the new economic center of Canda according to this report, and with the business friendly Saskatchewan Party in office I can see a flood of investment and economic growth in the coming years:

http://oakshirefinancial.com/2012/02/22/energy-investing-in-saskatchewan/



> *Energy Investing in Saskatchewan*
> 02/22/12 by Guest Contributor
> Filed under Bourbon & Bayonets
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (27 Feb 2012)

Just in case we needed yet more proof that Dalton McGuinty is a blithering f_cking idiot who slept through Economics 101 we have this, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/mcguinty-rebuffs-redfords-oil-sands-plea/article2351145/


> McGuinty rebuffs Redford's oil-sands plea
> 
> KAREN HOWLETT
> 
> ...




Sadly I'll wager that a majority of Ontarians also believe (for the same reasons they _believe_ in e.g. virgin birth, the tooth fairy and female genital mutilation) that a low dollar/no profitable energy sector is "good" for Canada. I except the _Good Grey Globe's_ Jeffrey Simpson to chime in any moment now support Dimwit Dalton's views.

Ontario manufacturers should have been using the strong dollar to retool and rebuild with imported technology and boost their productivity - provincial governments, Tory and Liberal, should have been giving them tax breaks to do so, but Dismal Dalton would rather bitch about Alberta's energy boom. 

It is to weep!


----------



## Edward Campbell (29 Feb 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Just in case we needed yet more proof that Dalton McGuinty is a blithering f_cking idiot who slept through Economics 101 we have this, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/mcguinty-rebuffs-redfords-oil-sands-plea/article2351145/
> 
> ...




As to why McGuinty is a dimwit, see this article, which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/stephen-gordon/memo-to-ontarios-dalton-mcguinty-strong-dollar-is-good-for-canada/article2352230/


> Memo to Ontario's Dalton McGuinty: Strong dollar is good for Canada
> 
> STEPHEN GORDON
> 
> ...




But I see, also in today's _Globe and Mail_ that McGuinty retreats in oil-sands spat, calls for national energy strategy, _"Note to Alison Redford from Dalton McGuinty: I’m sorry I said the high “petro dollar” has hobbled my province, but that’s what happens when I work in “real time” and have no opportunity to self-edit.

That was the much more conciliatory tone Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty struck with Alberta Premier Alison Redford on Wednesday, two days after he rebuffed her when she called on him to be a more vocal advocate for her province’s oil-sands development."_

More on link

Maybe the one and only and only Liberal who did stay awake in Economics 101 came to the office ...


----------



## a_majoor (29 Feb 2012)

> “That has  Ontario's high taxes and escalating electrical bills  knocked the wind out of Ontario exporters and manufacturing in particular,” Mr. McGuinty said.



Fixed that for you, Dalton.


----------



## Edward Campbell (2 Mar 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Jennifer Welsh gained both 'face' and popularity here by disagreeing, publicly and eloquently, with Alan Gotlieb and the _big bang_ group here in Ottawa.   Gotlieb and friends argue that the only way we can make the Americans 'pay attention' is to offer them a truly _big deal_ - no more _creeping continentalism_ (my phrase), rather a customs union and a common border 'union' and _North American Defence Command_ all rolled up into one package.
> 
> Welsh countered, correctly, I think, that there are so few Americans interested in anything like a _big bang_ that it would land with a dull thud and be forgotten by Tuesday morning.   She argued for many of the same things Gotlieb wants ~ a customs union, to start (followed by a currency union), security union (common _ outer perimeter_ border, etc and a complete _joint_ and _combined_ (sea, land air), North American Defence Command, etc - but, she suggested, one at a time, without too much political involvement because Canadians, broadly, do   to want to _cozy up_ to our American friends and neighbours â â€œ anti-Americanism is a deep rooted, dark and unpleasant part of our national psyche and Welsh, like many successful politicians, understand that.   Welsh positioned herself in the space into which Paul Martin was forced to back-peddle and he has grabbed her like a drowning man grabs a branch.
> 
> ...




A lot of water has passed under many bridges - Paul Martin is gone and _pizzaz_ is no longer required in foreign policy, just for a start, but _creeping continentalism_ is alive and well according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/us-official-predicts-norad-border-pact-with-canada/article2356680/


> U.S. official predicts ‘NORAD border’ pact with Canada
> 
> STEVEN CHASE
> 
> ...




Those who follow my musings here on Army.ca will remember that this, a "common perimeter," is something I favour. It essentially erases the  border ~ what the John Turner campaign accused _Fibber Muldoon_ Brian Mulroney of wanting to do in the 1988 election campaign.

But the process needs to involve e.g. common product standards for everything from toothpaste to canned shrimp and it needs to involve common immigration and visitor visa standards ~ meaning that the US has to severely tighten its tourism visa rules, thereby closing a major terrorist and criminal _route_ into North America.

Above all it needs to be done quietly, step-by-step, without fanfare until, suddenly, the border is .... 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





 We (they) have been at this for about 50 years - harmonizing, standardizing and so on ... another ten or twenty years should do it.


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## Sythen (5 Mar 2012)

Not sure if this is the right thread for this, but here goes:

http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120302/will-iceland-switch-to-the-loonie-120302/20120302/?hub=OttawaHome



> Iceland considering switch to Canadian dollar
> 
> 
> Will ongoing economic uncertainty about the eurozone push Iceland into the stable arms of the Canadian dollar?
> ...



More on link. I can't see anything wrong with wanting to increase demand for our dollar.. Anyone who knows more about this than me (99.9% of posters on this forum lol) want to weigh in?


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## Edward Campbell (5 Mar 2012)

Sythen said:
			
		

> Not sure if this is the right thread for this, but here goes:
> 
> http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120302/will-iceland-switch-to-the-loonie-120302/20120302/?hub=OttawaHome
> 
> More on link. I can't see anything wrong with wanting to increase demand for our dollar.. Anyone who knows more about this than me (99.9% of posters on this forum lol) want to weigh in?




Also discussed here.

There is a _potential_ in this for Canada and the "outside the EU" free trade area (Iceland, Leichenstein, Norway and Switzerland) to do a deal ~ not that the Norwegians or Swiss need a better currency.

The EU and the Euro are less and less attractive right now.


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## Sythen (5 Mar 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Also discussed here.



ahh sorry, just moved and internet not up yet.. Kinda behind on my news reading.


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## The Bread Guy (5 Mar 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> A lot of water has passed under many bridges - Paul Martin is gone and _pizzaz_ is no longer required in foreign policy, just for a start, but _creeping continentalism_ is alive and well according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/us-official-predicts-norad-border-pact-with-canada/article2356680/
> 
> ...


It certainly isn't in the cards right now - this bit appears to have been added to the original article....


> .... The Prime Minister’s Office, however, said this did not reflect their intentions.
> 
> “Our plan is clear that it respects each nation’s sovereignty and those comments are not compatible with that vision,” said Andrew MacDougall, associate director of communications ....


While in theory, an erased border would be a good thing, I worry Canada may not arm twist strongly enough to ensure we don't get bulldozed by a much larger market south of us in "harmonizing".


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## Edward Campbell (5 Mar 2012)

Sythen said:
			
		

> ahh sorry, just moved and internet not up yet.. Kinda behind on my news reading.




Actually, I thought of putting it in here, too ... a cross reference is helpful.


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## GAP (12 Mar 2012)

Why protecting dairy, poultry farmers is no sacred cow for Harper
JOHN IBBITSON Globe and Mail Monday, Mar. 12, 2012 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/why-protecting-dairy-poultry-farmers-is-no-sacred-cow-for-harper/article2366116/

Is the Harper government willing to dismantle the supply management system that protects poultry and dairy farmers from competition? You should bet that it is.

The Conservatives’ trade agenda requires it. Domestic politics permits it. And although Stephen Harper is keeping his own counsel on the issue, those watching Canada’s trade negotiations are convinced the Prime Minister will act when the time comes.

There would be plenty of support – billions of dollars-worth – for farmers during a lengthy transition. But the end to protection from foreign imports for dairy and eggs appears inevitable.

Diversifying trade is Mr. Harper’s highest priority. If this Conservative majority government is known for only one thing, the Prime Minister wants that one thing to be trade.

This is why the Conservatives are putting so much emphasis on a free-trade agreement with Europe, why the government is working hard at concluding an agreement with India, why Mr. Harper has visited China twice in less than three years, why feelers are out to see if Japan or Thailand are interested.

And it is why Canada is determined to get a seat at the table where the Trans-Pacific Partnership is being negotiated. This ambitious new agreement would open markets among nine Pacific nations –including the United States, Malaysia, Australia and Chile – representing a quarter of the world’s GDP.

Japan, Canada and Mexico have asked to join the talks. Bringing them in would expand the consortium’s size to a third of global GDP.

But to join, applicants must be prepared to abandon agricultural subsidies. For Canada, that means surrendering the supply management system that protects dairy and poultry farmers. Refusal to accept that condition kept Canada from joining the talks at an earlier stage.

All nine current member countries must approve before a new country can join the talks, but really it’s about securing approval from Washington. International Trade Minister Ed Fast was in the American capital in recent days and is in New York Monday to push for acceptance. Canada is promising to bring “a very high level of ambition” to the talks, said Mr. Fast last week. He is arguing that the Canada-U.S. supply chains are so integrated that it makes sense for both countries to be at the TPP table together.

He is also apparently arguing that most Pacific countries have agricultural subsidies of one sort or another that could be exempted from a final agreement. But the Americans (and the Australians and the New Zealanders) are adamant: if Canada wants in, it must be prepared to dismantle supply management.

If it comes down to joining what could be the world’s most important new trade bloc, or protecting butter and eggs, don’t bet on Mr. Harper to side with butter and eggs. 
more on link


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## a_majoor (12 Mar 2012)

Cutting another $8 billion should be easy at this rate:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/03/09/william-watson-still-plenty-left-to-chop-and-slice/



> *William Watson: Still plenty left to chop and slice*
> 
> William Watson  Mar 9, 2012 – 10:31 PM ET
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (12 Mar 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> A good commentary, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/why-canadas-corporate-tax-cuts-rate-a-collective-cheer/article2290427/
> 
> ...




More from the same columnist, Neil Reynolds, on corporate taxes in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/switzerland-against-the-world/article2364613/


> Switzerland against the world
> 
> NEIL REYNOLDS
> 
> ...




Corporate taxes are popular - many, possibly even most people like them; that's because many, possible even most people have no, zip, _nada_, zero knowledge of macroeconomics, but taxing big bad corporations makes them feel good. For heaven's sake if all we want to do is to make stupid people feel good we can give them free marijuana; it will be cheaper and less damaging.

Despite the laws that make corporations "people" for many and various purposes they are not "people" and they are not like "people" when it comes to paying taxes. When "people," like you and me, pay taxes we must find the money from within our own resources: use our savings, have a garage sale, borrow from Mom ~ when a corporation is made to pay taxes it has two choices:

1. Deprive the owners, the shareholders of their rightful, *productive* profits (never a good idea); or

2. Raise prices to the end consumer (you and me).

Corporations invariably choose option 2 which means that we, you and I, pay the corporate taxes, we just do so inefficiently, paying for a small army of civil servants, accountants and lawyers to cycle our money through the corporate tax system. It is all a colossal waste - aimed principally at making less than smart voters feel good.


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## a_majoor (17 Mar 2012)

The fact that this much generating capacity could be left offline for so long is pretty bizzare. Atl least Ontario will now have a reliable energy source plugged into the grid, rather than windmills and other fantasy devices:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/03/16/toronto-bruce-power-nuclear-plant.html



> *Bruce Power nuclear unit to restart after 17 years*
> Bruce Power to be the world's largest nuclear facility
> The Canadian Press Posted: Mar 16, 2012 2:46 PM ET Last Updated: Mar 16, 2012 3:49 PM ET
> 
> ...



As a post script, it should be noted that CANDU reactors are now very old technology, and have been pretty much overtaken by various technologies like High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactors (for large centralized installations like Bruce) and proposed Thorium molten salt reactors for small "local" power generation. Still, we "go to war with the army we have", and since Ontario is heavily invested in CANDU reactors (Bruce, Darlington and Pickering), we will be using these for the forseeable future.


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## Edward Campbell (17 Mar 2012)

Here is some good news, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/03/16/andrew-coyne-canada-is-poised-to-win-front-door-access-to-a-billion-person-market/


> Canada at the crossroad of trade
> 
> Andrew Coyne
> 
> ...




The historical evidence suggests, quite strongly, that free trade brings greater prosperity, even when the free trade is one sided: in other words we would, in the longer term, do better of if we unilaterally dropped all tariffs ~ there would be sort term pain, to be sure, but history suggests there would also be long term gain ... shades of John Crosby and the 1980 budget. 

Further: free trade is a *liberal* policy ~ _liberal_ being defined as a mix of _utilitarianism_ and _individualism_, while _protectionism_ is a very _conservative_ instinct ~ which is why the famous liberal thinker John Stuart Mill said, _"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it."_ In 2012 a liberal of Mill's stripe, someone like me, is lumped in with what a lazy, ill educated media calls _conservatives_  while the real _conservatives_, Mill's "stupid people," are members of or vote for the Liberal Party of Canada and the New Democratic Party of Canada and the Democratic Party in the USA. (That does not mean that all, or even many, Canadian Conservatives or US Republicans are either _liberal_ or smart.)


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## a_majoor (17 Mar 2012)

The "Chopping block" series of articles in the National Post are quite useful in showing how we can easily beat the deficit targets with a continuing series of small changes. These so called "tax pigs" by themselves come to about $2 billion; the GST exemptions come to $17 billion, which would eliminate 1/2 of the deficit by itself. Cumulatively, spending cuts of $8 billion, the additional $2 billion from eliminating the tax pigs and the $17 billion from eliminating GST preference would bring the deficit down to such a low level that realistic economic growth could reasonably be expected to consume it in the form of increased revenues.

This still leaves the accumulated debt, unfunded liabilities and "recapitalization" of Canada; many of the suggestions of previous editions of the "Chopping block" show where other cuts could be made (although paying off the trillion dollars in debt and unfunded liabilities could take centuries just using this approach), while broad basd tax cuts have a historical record of bosting economic growth, which can be used in tandem to pay down the trillion dollars and recapitalize Canada by boosting income and lowering the 42% tax burden the aveage Canadian family pays today.

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/03/15/the-chopping-block-axe-the-tax-pigs/



> *The Chopping Block 2012: Axe the tax pigs*
> Jack M. Mintz  Mar 15, 2012 – 8:41 PM ET | Last Updated: Mar 16, 2012 1:09 PM ET
> 
> Tax preferences cost billions, to little effect
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (23 Mar 2012)

This informative article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, could have gone in the *Budget 2012* or *Election 2015* threads but this seemed best:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/incredible-shrinking-government-message-more-important-than-ever/article2378490/singlepage/#articlecontent


> ‘Incredible shrinking government’ message more important than ever
> 
> NEIL REYNOLDS
> 
> ...




And it is to be hoped that this Conservative government and future governments, which will be of _other than Conservative_ stripes, will continue to shrink government until we reach that happy, happy state of 19th century liberalism. And yes, in public finance, as in so very many other things, _Uncle Louis_ St Laurent was right.

The reason that none, or very little of the downsizing has been done in the provinces is that Chrétien/Martin shrunk the federal government by offloading the burden on to those same provinces.


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## Edward Campbell (24 Mar 2012)

This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is interesting in and of itself but it is the comments that I found especially interesting ~ some (many? just those, normally left of centre folk who usually comment on articles?) Canadians hate *public sector trade unions*:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-sorry-state-of-our-unions/article2380055/


> The sorry state of our unions
> 
> JOHN ALLEMANG
> 
> ...




Now, I happen to believe in "free, collective bargaining," in enterprises because I understand that the _value_ of labour to the enterprise must be set in the market so that it can be properly counted in the cost/price decisions. I also believe that trade unions have and continue to be important in areas like workplace health and safety.

My views on public sector unions are well known - I think that government, back in the 1960s and '70s, were inept bargainers. 50+ years ago public sector workers had, relative to the private sector, low wages but that was offset by an _'iron rice bowl,'_ near unbreakable job security.* After public sector unions were established they bargained for and gained** much higher wages but the government did not get any job security concessions. Now public sector workers are sometimes (often?) paid more than their private sector confreres in roughly equivalent jobs and they still have the old, 1950s style _iron rice bowl_.

Private sector unions unions are between a rock and a hard place; public sector unions are an economic mistake.


----------
*   The old Honest John surface to surface missile (which we had back in the 1960s) was sometimes called the _civil servant_ because "it doesn't work and you can't fire it."
** And let us be very clear that those public sector unions also, _de facto_, bargained for the CF - because CF salaries were (still are?) _benchmarked_ against public sector salaries. I can guarantee that no one, including me, was complaining about us, and by extension the public sector, being overpaid.


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## Brad Sallows (24 Mar 2012)

>It’s a fact. Canada has a smaller federal government than it did in the Roaring Twenties.

Misleading GIGO.  Measuring public spending as a share of GDP fails to take into account the relative change in GDP.  Colloquially, the pie is a lot bigger.  In particular, the sensible comparison is to adjust per capita GDP into constant dollars (benchmarked to any year you choose).  If GDP per capita in constant dollars multiplied by 10 and government's share of spending of GDP fell by half, spending would still be 5 times higher than it was.

Example: 

Canada, 1969, per capita GDP in 2005 USD: $17,361
Canada, 2011, per capita GDP in 2005 USD: $36,122

GoC Fiscal References Tables, expenses as % of GDP
1969-1970: 17.4%
2011-2011: 16.6%

17.4% of $17,361 = $3,020
16.6% of $36,122 = $5,996

Additional premise: the 1920s economy was not as robust as the 1969 economy.  Conclusion: Canada does NOT have a smaller federal government than it did during the Roaring Twenties.  It may have a federal government which "spends less as a share of GDP", but so what?  The ideal limit of conscription for public purposes should be "as little as possible".

Idiot dunces Innumerate people Those who are unwilling to discuss "facts" meaningfully or who are at risk of ignorantly - albeit perhaps unintentionally - spreading propaganda, should stick to gossip.  Alternatively, if they wish to write about "relative" size of government, they should take great pains not to drop the qualifier "relative" and to stress its meaning repeatedly for the benefit of readers who might not notice the subtle shift in meaning when "relative" is dropped and the writer continues bleating about "a smaller government".


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## Kirkhill (24 Mar 2012)

Brad, normally I agree with your take but here I have to say that your use of numbers might be as selective as the author's.

To use a 1969 (Trudeau era) analogue for 1929 seems to me to be specious.

The problem, in my opinion starts with the fact the in 1929 Canada had a smaller population, the economy was effectively an export economy underpinned by access to the British Empire (pre Westminster) and the US market, the gold standard was in effect, the selection of goods in the market place was vastly different and GDP was calculated differently.    

It is difficult enough to compare 2012 to 1969.  To compare 2012, or even 1969 to 1929 is an exercise comparable to determining the impact of a pint of beer on a labourer's income in 1257.  

I don't doubt your numbers or the author's numbers but I do question whether or not either argument clarifies the situation currently.

With respect to the current situation I think it is safe to say that Canada is generally considered a successful country by the accountants not because our debt has declined since Chretien/Martin Mulroney/Wilson(?) came to power but because our debt has declined as a share of GDP in that era.  That is not because of the pittances that have been put against the debt (as I perceive them) but because our GDP has grown (and I can't clearly determine to my own satisfaction how much of that is "natural" inflation and how much of that is due to induced money supply - old debts cost less when new dollars are used).

Regardless of the validity of the GDP metric it is an accepted, and probably useful, metric in the short term.  And based on that, if the market is giving us credit for reducing the ratio of debt to GDP then surely it is acceptable to describe the relative cost of Government in the same terms?  Money pared from government costs ultimately means a reduction in the rate at which the debt builds potentially leaving more of the GDP in the hands of the taxpayer.

It may be more satisfying to wield an axe and watch the blood fly in all directions.  But ultimately it may be more productive to slowly bleed and pare the host at a pace that they don't detect.

I believe that everything we see about the PM suggests that he prefers to move quietly and pare rather than chop.  To this point, judging from commentary from statists like Jeffrey Simpson, Lawrence Martin and Gerald Kaplan, it would seem to me that he is being successful.

If they are annoyed then Harper must be doing something right. ;D


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## Brad Sallows (24 Mar 2012)

I used 1969 only because I did not readily find figures for the 1920s.

Granted the measure might be different, but the gist of my argument is that if 1969 is an upper bound for the 1920s and 1969 emphatically < 2011, it is ridiculous to conclude what the author proposed.  The only assumption needed is 1920s <= 1969.  My guidelines for an assumption are that it must be reasonable (I think it is), and it should be verifiable (with a little more research, perhaps the numbers can be found online).  I think it will be very much harder to show that per-person wealth creation in 1929 was greater than in 1969.

IOW: "size" of govt in 1929 <= "size" of govt in 1969 < "size" of govt in 2011.

I agree with the use of GDP share measures when the point of the discussion is "affordability" or "relative affordability".  But I can concede that we are further within the envelope of relative affordability at this time, without conceding that the degree of governmental inteference and involvement - direct or indirect - in my affairs is less now than in 1929.  They are not equivalent, nor is one even a proxy or approximation of the other.

The same discussion surfaced recently among some US pundits: the idea that hey, really the federal government is smaller and shrinking!  They are, from the tone of the articles I read, approaching the topic dishonestly with an ulterior and discreditable motive: to talk about relative spending levels when to most people "big government" means the absolute degree of involvement of government in people's lives.  They seek actively to conflate and confuse the two so that the "facts" of the former (spending) obfuscate the reality of the latter (control and intrusion).  It is the same debating tactic used by CAGW enthusiasts: to use the trivial and uncontroversial "fact" of current climate warming (the "GW" part) - or even the full "AGW" part (since some component must be man-made) - as a launching point to claim that people are science-deniers, when in fact they are deniers of the unproven "C" (catastrophic).


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## Kirkhill (25 Mar 2012)

OK, stipulated.

Government is bigger now than in 1929.  And it is more intrusive.  Relative wealth of the country.....I agree to wait out on that until useful numbers are seen.

WRT the trend recently: I think we agree that there is a useful move in the right direction.  Perhaps we disagree on the speed at which the change is happening and whether a faster rate is possible?


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## Brad Sallows (25 Mar 2012)

To be a heretic, I'm not certain it's a move in the right direction although I tend to favour it.  We might need more money for services and transfers to individuals.  However, I've noticed that when a government announces "new" money for health, education, infrastructure, whatever, the first people in line are the public sector unions.  (Applies in BC, at least.)  Unless they can demonstrate increases in productivity, I am unmoved by assertions that compensation needs to increase for more than the rate of inflation.  In a competitive market many of the compensation gains of the past 40+ years would not have occurred and the people who genuinely need the social safety net would have more access to more of it.

Government should not be a sinecure for people who belong in the "25%" (I think the bar of social outrage needs to be lower than "1%").  They (we) can look after themselves well enough without periodically holding taxpayers hostage.


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## Redeye (25 Mar 2012)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> To be a heretic, I'm not certain it's a move in the right direction although I tend to favour it.  We might need more money for services and transfers to individuals.  However, I've noticed that when a government announces "new" money for health, education, infrastructure, whatever, the first people in line are the public sector unions.  (Applies in BC, at least.)  Unless they can demonstrate increases in productivity, I am unmoved by assertions that compensation needs to increase for more than the rate of inflation.  In a competitive market many of the compensation gains of the past 40+ years would not have occurred and the people who genuinely need the social safety net would have more access to more of it.
> 
> Government should not be a sinecure for people who belong in the "25%" (I think the bar of social outrage needs to be lower than "1%").  They (we) can look after themselves well enough without periodically holding taxpayers hostage.



Great few posts. I don't think there's a great objective measure of government "size" but a nice, steady effort to chip away at bloat in the public service I think appeals to a lot of people, so long as the services the public expects are still being delivered. There are going to be some major demographic challenges there, of course, but such is life, and I'm sure we'll have lots of roaring debate about how to go about facing those challenges over the next few years (witness the uproar over OAS changes). The highlighted part is the most important thing. That applies to private sector employment (where even cost of living adjustments aren't necessarily an assured thing!), and should apply to the public sector. Compensation should be good enough to compete with private sector employers for good people. I don't like the idea of outright attacking public employees or trying to drive down their wages anymore than I like vilifying them as the source of all budget issues, because I want those people to be among the brightest and best. But I don't see where some might want to get off trying to claim anything more than inflation adjustments without a demonstration of merit. Of course, that doesn't happen in any union environment really, and that's the problem I have with them in general.

Well made points, Brad.


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## a_majoor (26 Mar 2012)

Two billion dollars worth of good news. While it is still a drop in the bucket, it indicates a positive trend line and a will to deal with the deficit as a minimum. How the government intends to deal with the long term debt and unfunded liabilities (totalling @ 1 trillion dollars) is the next question we need to start asking our MP's:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/03/26/rbc-ottawa-deficit.html



> *Federal budget deficit less than feared, says RBC*
> 
> CBC News Posted: Mar 26, 2012 2:49 PM ET Last Updated: Mar 26, 2012 5:15 PM ET Read 18 comments18
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (27 Mar 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Here is some good news, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_:
> 
> http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/03/16/andrew-coyne-canada-is-poised-to-win-front-door-access-to-a-billion-person-market/
> 
> ...




Although I agree it, the tactics referred to in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is "bullying," I happen to agree with dropping the "supply management" system even without concessions for the reasons I have cited above:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/being-a-spoke-in-american-trade-isnt-enough-for-canada/article2382331/


> Being a spoke in American trade isn't enough for Canada
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> 
> ...




Both Plans A and B should be pursued at the same time ... they both make good economic sense.

Supply management must go, sooner or later, it is a dumb policy - unless you happen to be one of the lucky few who are allowed to fix the prices the 99%+ pay for milk and eggs. The farmers concerned have been quite vocal, going so far as to threaten violence, and when, in past years (e.g. 1976), Ottawa even dared to talk about eliminating supply management those farmers did demonstrate, with violence, on Parliament Hill.






Source: CBC News http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/01/04/pol-supply-management-trade.html?cmp=rss

What better time to move than now, during the first two years of a mandate ~ by the time the 2015 election rolls around 99%+ of Canadians will be grateful for lower milk, butter and egg prices.


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## Infanteer (27 Mar 2012)

"Hub and spoke"?  Isn't that merchantilism?  I thought Adam Smith killed that theory in the 1700s?


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## Rifleman62 (27 Mar 2012)

Now who would want to pay a $1.57 a gallon of milk, $2.29 a lb of butter, $1.89 for a dozen large eggs ($0.97 on sale), $0.67 a lb for a whole chicken, or $11.97 for a dozen Heineken, etc?


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## a_majoor (27 Mar 2012)

Infanteer said:
			
		

> "Hub and spoke"?  Isn't that merchantilism?  I thought Adam Smith killed that theory in the 1700s?



Mercantilism and it's close cousin Crony Capitalism are officially debunked, but continue to exist in the real world since the incentives (if you are on the right side of things) are so great to the people who benefit. Who cares about the economy as a whole or the taxpayers when *you* are bringing in the big bucks because of these policies?


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## a_majoor (31 Mar 2012)

If there ever was a reason to drop marketing boards as detrimental to the interests of consumers and farmers alike, this one is it. In the first section of the National Post, the story is expanded, and one breath taking fact emerges; there is a huge oversupply of skim milk which this factory could tap into, but farmers are forced to sell it for processing as lower value skim milk powder and animal feed; costing them a potential bonanza in income:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/03/30/terence-corcoran-chobanis-greek-yogurt-drama/



> *Terence Corcoran: Canada’s Big Fat Chobani Greek yogurt drama*
> Terence Corcoran  Mar 30, 2012 – 10:41 PM ET | Last Updated: Mar 31, 2012 11:26 AM ET
> 
> In this case, supply management is protecting processors at the expense of farmers
> ...


----------



## GAP (31 Mar 2012)

According to this, the budget was just really a shell game................

 Fiscal fight left for another day
Terence Corcoran  Mar 29, 2012
Article Link

Flaherty takes advantage of low interest rates to keep spending, while warning Canadians not to do the same

This is no budget for fiscal conservatives and small-government libertarians, but Jim Flaherty’s flabby big “L” liberal puffball of a 2012 fiscal plan is guaranteed to knock the platforms out from under the opposition parties.

That’s a good thing, at least for the short term. Certainly Bob Rae and Thomas Mulcair have nothing to stand on today in the wake of Mr. Flaherty’s fiscal card tricks. But time may be on their side. When the next election rolls around the Tory financial picture could begin to look a little creaky and unsustainable.

For all its superficial achievement of budgetary balance by 2015, the Harper Tories remain on a risky fiscal track. Mr. Flaherty, in fact, is doing exactly what he has been warning Canadians about on mortgages. As he said in one of his finger-wagging sessions with Canadian home buyers last January, “We want to make sure we don’t have the kind of medium-term problem that has been experienced elsewhere … to assume large indebtedness at low interest rates,” Mr. Flaherty said.

Good bit of advice, but not one the government is taking. Running up debt and claiming victory over deficits on the basis of low interest rates is exactly what Mr. Flaherty’s new budget does.

By my count, the big-spending Flaherty budget holds on to its balanced-budget targets only because it has been able to cash in on more than $27-billion in interest rate charges on $600-billion in national debt — interest Ottawa now forecasts will not have to be paid this year and over the next few years.

In other words, Ottawa is being bailed out by windfall rock-bottom interest rate policies maintained by the Bank of Canada and the U.S federal reserve, rate policies that will not be around forever. But instead of using the low-rate environment to help balance the budget sooner, the Harper government just keeps on spending.

One budget list of new spending items totals $2-billion over two years, including $760-million in subsidies for job creation and innovation. More backing ($100-million) for the government-owned Business Development Bank and $400-million to promote the creation of “large scale venture capital” and $67-million this year alone to transform the National Research Council into a product commercialization outfit.
More on link


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## GAP (1 Apr 2012)

Time will tell, but the sense I get from most people is that they are comfortable with it. If they have issues it is around a single issue, or is a provincial/municipal responsibility, not Federal.

David Frum: Canada can fairly claim to be the best-governed country in the world
David Frum  Mar 31, 2012
Article Link

Under Stephen Harper, Canada can fairly claim to be the best-governed country among advanced democracies in the world. Thursday’s federal budget locks up Canada’s lead.

Right now, the major economies share a common economic problem: With the world slowly and fitfully emerging from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, they must begin to plan to reduce their debt burdens — but not so fast that they crush demand and abort the recovery. The United Kingdom exemplifies the dangers of moving too fast: your recovery falters.

The United States exemplifies the risks of moving too slow: The inability of its political system to agree on any plan to balance the budget has cost the world’s biggest economy its Triple-A credit rating.

Canada has been seeking to move at a pace that’s just right — and with the 2012 budget, Canada continues to succeed. Barring an unexpected slump into renewed recession, Thursday’s budget moves Canada to budget balance over the next three years. There will be no tax increases. Federal spending growth will be restrained, but outlays will still rise: from $272.9 billion in the year just ended to a projected $296.6 billion in 2015-2016.

This “steady as she goes” course has disappointed some. The Edmonton Sun denounced the budget as “Trudeauesque.”

Such an assessment is upside-down. Trudeau’s budgeting was notorious for its recklessness. Harper’s budgeting is impeccable in its caution. By 2015-2016, Canada will have reduced both spending and debt to pre-recession levels. Nobody else on earth will be able to say anything like that.

The austerity economies of the Eurozone have cut and cut their budgets. Yet budget balance eludes them. They’re in a trap. If you reduce spending too fast, you crimp your economy — and thus also and inadvertently reduce your revenues.

A less dramatic economic policy can support growth and boost revenues. Here’s a trade that a lot of other countries would gratefully accept: Jim Flaherty’s plan allows spending to rise by 11.65% over 5 years. Over those same five years, revenues are expected to surge by 26%.

Would anyone benefit from a smaller rise in the expenditure line if it is true that ­­— as most economists agree — a reduction in expenditure pulls down the revenue line by even more?

The Harper government has already accomplished the second hardest task in government fiscal management: It responded to the economic crisis by supplying just enough fiscal stimulus. Miscalculate that dosage, and you risk careening from economic crisis to debt crisis.

Now it is settling to the very hardest task: Mustering the discipline to recall the stimulus when it is no longer wanted. Overdo it, and you get the relapse into recession that the U.S. suffered in 1937. Underdo it, and you miss your targets and waste your effort.

On these fiscal calculations hang the prosperity of tens of millions of people and the future of a great country. OK, yes, sure — after it’s all over, we’ll be able to look back in time and see with hindsight how this decision or that might have been made better.

From the perspective of today, however, the important news is: how much has already been done right, under the most extreme difficulty, in a time of supreme danger.
More on link


----------



## Brad Sallows (1 Apr 2012)

>By my count, the big-spending Flaherty budget holds on to its balanced-budget targets only because it has been able to cash in on more than $27-billion in interest rate charges on $600-billion in national debt — interest Ottawa now forecasts will not have to be paid this year and over the next few years.

So we're basically going to get out of this hole the same way we got out of the last one - low/lower debt servicing costs, and GDP growth, with a little assistance from fiscal restraint/cuts.  The LPC should recognize and applaud this, it being imitation.

But it does nothing to develop fiscal freedom of manoeuvre for the next crisis.  The only things that can do that are healthy operating surpluses, lowered debt (less vulnerability to debt servicing cost increases), higher interest rates (so that there is room to cut them), and relentlessly pro-business (GDP growth) policies.


----------



## GAP (1 Apr 2012)

I agree. 

There is no secret mantra they followed, just different rhetoric. The one thing they are doing is getting away from the "big brother/government will do it all" attitude. Nowhere near fast enough, but if they stay in power long enough people will grow accustomed to it.


----------



## Edward Campbell (1 Apr 2012)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> ...
> But it does nothing to develop fiscal freedom of manoeuvre for the next crisis.  The only things that can do that are healthy operating surpluses, lowered debt (less vulnerability to debt servicing cost increases), higher interest rates (so that there is room to cut them), and relentlessly pro-business (GDP growth) policies.




I agree we want *temporary* operating surpluses to lower the _total_ debt (national + provincial) to something around 25% of GDP, but:

1. interest rates should be set to control inflation, period; and

2. the "relentlessly pro-business (GDP growth) policies" require returning the surpluses to business by lower corporate taxes thus, eventually, eliminating operating surpluses.

The cost of governing the country can and must be born almost exclusively* by the people who live and work in the country, through the taxes they pay. The business of extracting the necessary money from them must be done expeditiously and *efficiently*, i.e. in a cost effective way. The tax system must be run with an eye to collecting the necessary money at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer - it may not be popular (people actually like corporate taxes because it makes them feel good - it makes them feel like "the man" is getting screwed, the fact that corporate taxes are inefficient and wasteful and are, eventually passed, 100% + costs, to the individual consumer/taxpayer is forgotten) but a good, efficient tax system benefits us all.


_____
* There are a few pennies "earned" through e.g. immigration fees that are not paid by individual Canadian taxpayers.


----------



## Kirkhill (1 Apr 2012)

GAP:

I believe you have it right.

Many people were expecting Harper to take this opportunity to show his "true colours".  His detractors were looking forward to the "I told you so" moment so they could lead the herd away from him.  His supporters, some of them, were looking forward to the emotional release of the "In your face" moment.  

I believe that Harper has shown that the colours he currently displays are the colours he has already displayed in government and they are characterized by the expression "No Surprises".  Caution.   Incrementalism.  Action if necessary but not necessarily action.

He can't turn around a system that developed over a century* in one term, much less one budget.  He needs to keep the herd with him long enough to get them to where he wants to take them.  And that will take time.

He wants/needs to emulate William Lyon MacKenzie King - a conservative if ever there was one.

*In my opinion the Canadian 20th century was dominated by William Lyon MacKenzie King - for good or ill.  Laurier made King possible by making Quebecers acceptable to the rest of Canada with his pro-Empire positions.  King joined Quebec and Ontario (and the prairies be dam'd) and created the Liberal state that was/is Canada. He made possible St-Laurent, Pearson, Trudeau and Chretien.


----------



## Edward Campbell (4 Apr 2012)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Canada's long-term energy security interest is to ensure that it shares (develops and exports, for sale) its energy with the rest of the world over the long term.  The alternative, if things get bad enough, is war.  You want peace?  Exploit resources.




More on this, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/the-keystone-xl-delay-was-a-gift-to-canada/article2391122/


> The Keystone XL delay was a gift to Canada
> 
> ADAM WATEROUS
> 
> ...




I am pretty much 100% onside with Mr. Waterous' analysis - Obama served us well.


----------



## Kirkhill (4 Apr 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> More on this, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/the-keystone-xl-delay-was-a-gift-to-canada/article2391122/
> 
> I am pretty much 100% onside with Mr. Waterous' analysis - Obama served us well.



Fair Comment.  Clouds with silver linings etc.....


----------



## Infanteer (4 Apr 2012)

It looks like Mr Harper will succeed where Mr Trudeau failed - due to the strength of our resource market, we will lessen the effects of sleeping with the elephant.


----------



## Sythen (4 Apr 2012)

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/united-states-becoming-less-relevant-canada-194152683.html



> Both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney had the same message in two different cities Monday: Canada needs to look west, not south.
> 
> In Washington, Harper met with U.S. President Barack Obama, and Mexican President Felipe Calderón in Washington, in a meeting dubbed the Three Amigos Summit.
> 
> ...



More on link.

As discussed earlier in this thread, it is definitely a good thing for Canada to eliminate the lower price we sell oil and gas to the US, and most of the commentors on the link agreed. I wonder how many of them will realise this means Canada will need to start pulling its own weight a lot more now? For years now the US has basically picked up the tab for the majority of continental defense.. How long until a POTUS says enough if enough, this has to be a mutual thing?


----------



## a_majoor (6 Apr 2012)

Sadly, many Canadian business executives still don't "get it". This is the attitude that Edward is pointing to when he decries the lack of competitiveness and productivity in Canadian business; the attitude is basically "It's someone else's problem to fix":

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/04/04/william-watson-if-you-cant-beat-china-surrender/



> *William Watson: If you can’t beat China, surrender*
> 
> William Watson  Apr 4, 2012 – 9:17 PM ET | Last Updated: Apr 5, 2012 7:48 AM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## Kirkhill (6 Apr 2012)

Two-armed robots are taking over.

How much time off?
How many hours in contract negotiation?
What is the shirt sleeve temperature?
How many air exchanges?
How much light?
How much food?
How many dependents?
What size house?
What size car?
How many washrooms?
What RRSP is required?
What LTD plan is required?
How many supervisors?
How many managers?

Edit to add evil thought:  >  How many gunners?


----------



## Edward Campbell (7 Apr 2012)

I disagree, quite fundamentally, with a lot of what is said in this opinion piece, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, but a lot more people pay attention to Thomas Homer-Dixon than pay attention to me so you should figure that this will be read and heads will nod in some pretty powerful circles:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/alls-not-lost-ontario-the-future-is-green-not-black/article2393398/


> All's not lost, Ontario. The future is green, not black
> 
> THOMAS HOMER-DIXON
> 
> ...




Homer-Dixon is correct that Ontario has many, many advantages a well educated, sophisticated workforce that can innovate being the biggest; but going green, while something that should be done just because carbon is a finite resource, is not the provincial saviour. I'm not sure what the "next big thing" will be, maybe "green" is really important, what I am sure of is that putting too many eggs in any one basket, _picking winners_, is not it.


----------



## Kirkhill (7 Apr 2012)

On the other hand ERC you have to give Homer this:  there are many places in the world where fossil fuels have to be imported which drives up all their input costs and decreases their competitiveness.  Nirvana is acheivable if a cheaper fuel source can be found.

I would support Ontario investing hard earned tax dollars in such a scheme.   Once they secure that alternative energy source then they will be able to outpace Alberta again and all will be right with the world.  In the meantime we in Alberta shall have to put up with making money from ancient outmoded technologies.

In the interest of setting Ontario off on the right track might I suggest that they start their research with "The Philosopher's Stone".  I am sure that there is much knowledge yet to be gleaned from those ancients.


----------



## Brad Sallows (9 Apr 2012)

"Going green" is to political/economic affairs as "reinforcing failure" is to martial affairs.


----------



## Edward Campbell (17 Apr 2012)

I suppose this report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Times_ (London) is about Canada being "relevant:"

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1d085e5a-88a7-11e1-9b8d-00144feab49a.html#axzz1sKvXFnjm


> Canadian approached for top BoE job
> 
> By Patrick Jenkins, Chris Giles and Brooke Masters
> 
> ...




This is quite a feather in Mr. Carney's cap and it reminds us that we cannot keep him forever.


----------



## a_majoor (21 Apr 2012)

The Liberal-NDP collaberation of the idiots in Ontario is treading dangerous ground here. Calls for increased taxation will cause a ruinous loss of income as business, skilled labour and capital flee. This is a pretty universal observation (as anyone who has watched recent developments in the UK, or noticed the failure of "millionaire taxes" in various US States, or even has a passing knowledge of history). Comparing this to "ethnic cleansing" may sound pretty extreme, but that will be the end result, and Regina and Calgary will replace Toronto as the financial capitals of Canada:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/04/18/visgoths-versus-bay-street/



> *Why I said taxes on the rich are like ethnic cleansing: Jim Doak*
> James Doak, Special to Financial Post  Apr 18, 2012 – 10:32 PM ET | Last Updated: Apr 19, 2012 1:48 PM ET
> 
> I recently labelled the Ontario NDP’s choice of taxing the rich as ethnic cleansing — trying to force a defined group, in this case those with annual incomes over $500,000, to emigrate. My choice of words was deliberate and the example I had in mind of recent Canadian vintage.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (25 Apr 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Although I agree it, the tactics referred to in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is "bullying," I happen to agree with dropping the "supply management" system even without concessions for the reasons I have cited above:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/john-ibbitson/being-a-spoke-in-american-trade-isnt-enough-for-canada/article2382331/
> 
> ...




More, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, on why supply management is a *silly* policy:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/kiwis-put-canadas-dairy-supply-scheme-to-shame/article2412589/


> Kiwis put Canada’s dairy supply scheme to shame
> 
> NEIL REYNOLDS | Columnist profile | E-mail
> 
> ...




Canadian dairy farmers are, right now,m fat, dumb and happy, pleasing the government rather than pleasing consumers; they could be even more fat and more happy, as are their Kiwi confreres, if they weren't so dumb.


----------



## a_majoor (28 Apr 2012)

The controlled drawdown of spending and taxes is working out very nicely. The fly in the ointment is Ontario's credit downgrad watch, which could single handedly bring everything to a screching halt by spiking interest rates. External shocks such as a chain reaction downgrade in the Eurozone sparked by Spain's downgrade to BBB+ or further deterioration of the US economy are also dangers to watch for:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/spending-cuts-give-ottawa-second-surplus-in-as-many-months/article2415852/



> *Spending cuts give Ottawa second surplus in as many months*
> BILL CURRY
> OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update
> Posted on Friday, April 27, 2012 11:06AM EDT
> ...



Of course the other problem is it will take another 14 months at this rate to eliminate the deficit and over 500 months to pay down the Debt (and an additional 500 months to cover the unfunded liabilities) assuming the government can continue to generate numbers like this, which is a problematic assumption at best. Still, being able to think our great grandchildren might celebrate debt freedom day in 2096 or 97 may hold some comfort.


----------



## Redeye (28 Apr 2012)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Comparing this to "ethnic cleansing" may sound pretty extreme, but that will be the end result, and Regina and Calgary will replace Toronto as the financial capitals of Canada:



 :rofl:

Thanks. I needed that laugh. A relatively small incremental increase in taxation isn't going to suddenly drive the financial industry out of Toronto. The cost of uprooting all the capital and people to move them would be massive, more than the tax cost I'd suspect. So, what will happen is some people will whine, and then life will carry on as normal.

That was even more ridiculous than the ethnic cleansing comment that brought it about.


----------



## a_majoor (29 Apr 2012)

Pierre Poilievre - Economic Freedom Speech - Enhanced Version

Excelent speech summarizing the historical roots of the financial crisis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWkUaJId7pM&feature=player_embedded#!


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver (29 Apr 2012)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Excelent speech summarizing the historical roots of the financial crisis:



I would assume you were sarcastic, but as I am beginning to know your views through your posts, that would be an incorrect assumption  .

I am a conservative, and fully endorse the current government handling of economic affairs. However, that speech from Poilievre is simply and utterly a complete economic claptrap politico-sound-good-to-my-constituents-who-don't-understand speech.

Fanny May and Freddy Mac did not sell any sub-prime mortgages - ever. They were sold by "economic freedom loving" capitalist organisations known as Banks and Mortgage Lending Institutions who were flaunting the rules that would qualify them for guarantees by FM and FM, without telling them that they were flaunting the rules. They were betting, without any provision for losing, on an ever increasing housing market, and to make maters worse, the great financial minds of the City (all economic freedom loving of course) then decide to bundle up all those sub-prime bets into apparently safe product (unfortunately all with the same clay foot) called asset backed commercial paper. That more than anything else (and the underlying greed) caused the financial melting and Poilievre completely ignores this. On the European side, he is right to point to problems with certain countries debt - but he should not equate that with the failure of what he calls "socialism" in Europe. You can't do that when you look at the European states that have the same or even greater "socialist" systems but are succeeding economically without any debt/deficit/ problems, such as the Nordic states - Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and, yes Germany (which is "socialist" in government system).

Finally, I find it funny that he would compare Canada's taxes to the US and somehow intimate that they are lower than the US. It just ain't so.


----------



## Edward Campbell (29 Apr 2012)

Oldgateboatdriver said:
			
		

> I would assume you were sarcastic, but as I am beginning to know your views through your posts, that would be an incorrect assumption  .
> 
> I am a conservative, and fully endorse the current government handling of economic affairs. However, that speech from Poilievre is simply and utterly a complete economic claptrap politico-sound-good-to-my-constituents-who-don't-understand speech.
> 
> ...




While I agree with you, broadly, especially about Pierre Poilievre being full of sh!t, I think Fanny May and Freddy Mac, and their political masters, do need to answer for creating an environment within which fast talking "money managers" could create valueless products from a very risky base and then get them rated as AAA. The fact that the mortgages were *guaranteed* by Fanny and Freddy, at the behest of both Democrats and Republicans ~ there's lots of blame for all the _social engineers_ in both parties, meant that the fast taklers could do their financial slight of hand with relative impunity.

Pierre Poilievre is a darling of the _right_ in Canada despice being bereft of ideas, intellect or experience.

But one thing about which Poilievre would have been right, had he bothered to think it through, is that most of the "blame" lies with the people who *bought* the financial 'fool's gold,' looking for a quick, unnaturally high return. Most of them knew, or should have known, that markets don't work that way - they are not that easy; as a general rule high yield = higher risk, no matter what Moodys _et al_ say about a product. Folks bought stuff marketee as high yield, it was riskey, it's ALWAYS risky, those same folks got badly burned. I might despise the fast talking creators of the packages but I have no, zero sympathy for the folks who bought them.


----------



## Rifleman62 (29 Apr 2012)

Greed.

Everyone suffers from it for something.


----------



## Nemo888 (1 May 2012)

Our banks did receive 114 billion in bailouts. 3400$ per person.  More than enough to buy every single share. 


*Canadian banks received 'secret' bailout: Think-tank*

By Peter Henderson, Postmedia News April 30, 2012


Canadians were never told the true cost of a $114-billion "secret bailout" for the country's biggest banks during the financial crisis, says a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

"We've had a false sense of security," said study author and CCPA economist David MacDonald.

"Ever since the global financial crisis struck in 2008, Canadians have been subjected to a constant refrain: Canada has the 'most sound banking system in the world,'" MacDonald writes in the report. "During the worst of the crisis — 2008 to 2010 — the official line was that Canada's banks did not require the extraordinary bailout measures that were being offered in other countries, particularly in the U.S.

"At its peak in March 2009, support for Canadian banks reached $114 billion. To put that into perspective, that would have made up seven per cent of the Canadian economy in 2009 and was worth $3,400 for every man, woman and child in Canada."

A spokesman for Finance Minster Jim Flaherty said MacDonald got it wrong.

"Despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, there was no 'secret bailout,'" said Flaherty spokesperson Chisholm Pothier. "Even a cursory look at the facts, readily available and published many times, indicates this report is completely baseless."

To some extent, the report and the rebuttal to it are a matter of how the facts are interpreted.

Where MacDonald says "bailout," a finance ministry official says "liquidity support." While MacDonald said the government tried to hide the numbers even from Access to Information requests, the official said the bank funding was "clearly, publicly laid out — repeatedly."

MacDonald used public filings by banks, government agencies, and financial regulators to provide what he called a composite picture of the flow of money between financial institutions and the individual Canadian banks struggling in the midst of a global recession.

All of the loans provided by the government as part of its relief program for Canadian lenders have been paid back in full, said Pothier.

The problems for the banks began when the credit crunch in the United States put the squeeze on Canadian lenders in late 2007.

The Harper government stepped in and used a number of measures to free up money for Canada's banks during the financial crisis — including buying mortgage-backed securities and providing short-term loans.

All told, the study counts $114 billion worth of guarantees and financial aid for Canada's big banks from October 2008 to July 2010 by the Bank of Canada, the United States Federal Reserve, and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

But it's not the amount of money that's at the centre of the dispute — MacDonald claims the government wasn't honest or transparent about its spending.

"The federal government claims it was offering the banks 'liquidity support,' but it looks an awful lot like a bailout to me," says MacDonald. "Whatever you call it, government aid for the country's biggest banks was far more substantial than the official line would suggest."

MacDonald study says that, at one point, three of the country's biggest banks — CIBC, Bank of Montreal and Scotiabank — were receiving government support that was equal to or more than the value of the company's shares.

"Government programs could have just purchased every single share in those banks instead of providing support," he said. "That's not the story Canadians were told. There was a massive failure in the private-sector market."

A spokeswoman for the Canadian Bankers Association said government support was meant to help banks lend to small business, not to protect the banks from failure.

"Not one bank in Canada was in danger of going bankrupt or required the government to buy an equity stake under taxpayer-funded bailouts," said Rachel Swiednicki.

Swiednicki said comparing the value of a bank's shares and their participation in a government program the banks say was aimed at boosting small-business lending is like comparing apples to oranges.

Similar efforts were made by central banks around the world when private credit markets froze in 2008 and 2009.

"Not only did these measures play an important role in supporting Canadian business during the credit crunch, they also made money for Canadian taxpayers," said Pothier.

The CMHC's purchase of $69 billion in home loans in 2008 and 2009 is expected to net the government $2.5 billion by 2015, according to projections in the 2012 budget.

Pothier said the government laid out its plans to support the banks in a number of public documents, most recently in the 2012 budget.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/business/Canadian+banks+received+secret+bailout+Think+tank/6540917/story.html#ixzz1tc5fb2RN


----------



## GAP (1 May 2012)

There was no secret bailouts....this was in the news at the time as a hedge against the issues in the US.....no big deal....


----------



## Nemo888 (1 May 2012)

Really, the 114 billion was just "liquidity support"  for small business loans. 3400$ for every man woman and child in Canada and more than the book value of the banks.  :facepalm:


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## SeaKingTacco (1 May 2012)

Nemo-

Did the $114 billion ever get spent, or was it pledged "if required"?

If any of it was spent, how much is still outstanding? You know- the difference between a loan and a gift?

The cdn centre for policy alternatives is usually somewhat....liberal...with the facts.


----------



## Redeye (1 May 2012)

SeaKingTacco said:
			
		

> Nemo-
> 
> Did the $114 billion ever get spent, or was it pledged "if required"?
> 
> ...



Yeah, and they're totally wrong.

The government did agree to buy mortgages from the banks - trading cash now for the stream of payments (at a premium), because despite the fact that Canadian banks were financially solid. Basically, what the deal did was allowed the banks to borrow using the Government Of Canada's credit rating, which was critical at the time because no one was lending to anyone but solid sovereign states at the time.

The government charged a premium that worked out to 50 basis points if I remember right, which means that the public made money on the deal, and the banks got access to the credit they need to keep operating (and in turn to allow businesses to keep operating, which was a concern at the time). In terms of risk, there was none. The government only was willing to buy mortgages insured by CMHC that met their underwriting standards, and for which they were on the hook in the event of default, not the banks. So the public assumed no risk but did a deal to make sure that the banks had access to liquidity without which the whole system collapses.

Don't confuse that with what happened in the USA, when crap loans were pawned off by lenders to institutional investors who didn't understand just how bad the loans they were buying actually were.


----------



## SeaKingTacco (1 May 2012)

Redeye- Good explanation.  You did better than I ever could have.

Nemo- Without going into details, Redeye is something of an expert in this particular field.  If he says it went down this way...it did.


----------



## DBA (1 May 2012)

I agree, Redeye's answer is very well done. 

A Parliamentary Information and Research Service document available at the Library of Partliament:
The Insured Mortgage Purchase Program



> Introduction
> 
> One of the major consequences of the collapse of the US real estate bubble in 2008 was the triggering of a significant crisis of confidence in global financial markets. In Canada, as elsewhere, the crisis made it harder for major financial institutions to secure short- and long-term financing and for Canadian consumers to obtain mortgage financing for property purchases.
> 
> ...



Further on is a section titled "Is the IMPP a Gift to the Financial Institutions?". 

Note this document has a date of 13 March 2009.


----------



## a_majoor (10 May 2012)

Our American neighbours seem to be getting the idea we are doing something right:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/05/09/Obama-Should-Go-to-Canada-for-Leadership-Lessons.aspx?p=1



> *Obama Should Go to Canada for Leadership Lessons*
> By LIZ PEEK, The Fiscal Times May 9, 2012
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (21 May 2012)

Neil Reynolds, in the _Globe and Mail's_ Report on Business, analyzes Dalton McGuinty's latest blunder in an excellent column that needs to be required reading for all Canadians.

We have a pretty good, not great, not even really good health care system - but it is too expensive. So we must do one of three things:

1. Find new money ~ allow significant _privatization_, in other words allow queue jumpring by people with gold cards. People without any knowledge of economics will rant and rave, incorrectly, that _private_ = for profit = more expensive. That is, demonstrably, untrue but most people believe it, because most people are poorly educated. Since most people believe a big lie governents will not consider the simple truth that the best health care systems (lower costs and better outcomes than Canada) are all mixed (public/private) systems;

2. Lower costs ~ close hospital beds, fire nurses, and now order doctors not to work (or, alternatively, work for free). This is easy because the poorly educated people like the idea of "make the rich pay;" or

3. Be honest and admit that a "single payer" system must rely upon rationing and tell obese people, for example, that they are responsible for their own heart disease and will not get cardiac surgery and tell smokers that they are at the bottom of the ist for cancer treatment. This is, _in truth_, the only way a single payer system can work, but it requires honesty so it is politically impossible.

I have no doubt that several of Ontario's most productive citizens - our best physicians and surgeons - will now vote with their feet and take their expensive training and considerable talents and ambition elsewhere. Too bad for us ...

Dalton McGuinty: making Canada less and less productive, one step at a time.


----------



## mariomike (21 May 2012)

Regarding the above post, some observations from my limited perspective. 
Between 2005 and 2012, the number of patient transports to emergency departments in Toronto increased by 34.4%.
Those were 9-1-1 calls. T-EMS had to stop responding to non-emergency calls in the 1990's due to lack of resources.

Even so, emergency response times have been steadily deteriorating since 1996. The standard ( 8:59 minutes to curbside 90% of the time ) is now only achieved 60% of the time. 

The EMS community medicine program ( CREMS ) is facing an uncertain futre. Community medicine paramedics refer patients identified as "frequent flyers" to community support networks instead of transport to hospital. This approach reduces the number of patients transported by ambulances to emergency rooms and decreases the number of repeat 911 calls.
CREMS now has 1000 patients enrolled in their Integrated Client Care program, and are projected to make 1,400 CREMS referrals in 2012.
CREMS is also responsible for an Immunization Program (PCM), environmental exposure, and the Safe City program. 

The EMS Dedicated Nurses Pilot Program which began in 2008 has had a positive effect on Off-Load Delay ( OLD ).

More cuts to EMS are in The City of Toronto 2012 operating budget. Among them:
Biomedical engineering technologist position eliminated.
Reduced overtime.
Reduced Multi-Patient Unit ( MPU bus ) fleet.
Office of Emergency Management (OEM) service reduction.


----------



## a_majoor (25 May 2012)

The scoop on EI. Finding people who are not working when foreigners are being imported to do these same jobs is one indicator that the system is indeed broken. 

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/24/john-ivison-new-ei-reforms-show-that-there-are-work-shy-living-in-every-province/



> *John Ivison: New EI reforms show there are ‘work-shy’ living in every province*
> 
> John Ivison  May 24, 2012 – 5:18 PM ET | Last Updated: May 24, 2012 8:06 PM ET
> THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (26 May 2012)

The _National Post's_ Andrew Coyne is not exactly a fan of Prime Minister Harper so this column, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_, is pretty favourable:



> Stephen Harper’s hidden agenda is the economy
> 
> Andrew Coyne
> 
> ...




So the "hidden agenda" is out in the open and guess what? It aims to put he national economy on a more sound, long term footing ~ it is a very _conservative_ (classically _liberal_) agenda.


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## a_majoor (26 May 2012)

Today's NP is full of good stuff; David Frum on how Canada's oil wealth is changing the economy and how the NDP, in particular, is reacting to it. The questions of interprovincial barriers and the creation of internal monopolies (i.e. the example of unionized nurses aides to exclude competition) is probably far more important in the long run than the current price of oil. If the price were to crash (die to another bout of recession when Greece leaves the EU, for example, or US unconventional oil plays hit the market and drive down prices), then we have a short term problem; but barriers remain despite outside influence so are a long term problem:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/26/david-frum-dutch-disease-we-should-be-so-lucky/



> *David Frum: ‘Dutch disease’? We should be so lucky*
> 
> David Frum  May 26, 2012 – 7:00 AM ET | Last Updated: May 25, 2012 5:03 PM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## GAP (26 May 2012)

I think the CPC have taken this into account in the EI changes.................



Don’t mess with Atlantic Canada
Article Link
 By Peter McKenna, The Ottawa Citizen May 25, 2012

Am I missing something or has the Harper government placed Atlantic Canada in its cross-hairs? With proposed changes to several key areas of public policy, it’s hard not to think that this region is being singled out for special punishment.

For instance, possible changes to the owner-operator and fleet separation provisions of the fishery are certain to put fishers in Atlantic Canada in a precarious position — most likely seeing their boats and gear eventually bought up by companies and individuals with deeper pockets.

Perhaps the deepest cut of all comes in the form of the newly released adjustments to the Employment Insurance (EI) program, which will surely penalize numerous seasonal workers in this region by trimming benefits to repeat users, imposing stricter rules for eligibility, and by altering the “suitable employment” requirements.

Still, the federal minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), Bernard Valcourt, is adamant that the Conservative government is not out to get Atlantic Canada. But Newfoundland and Labrador NDP MP Ryan Cleary is not so sure, telling one media outlet: “We need to be supporting the economy, not putting up roadblocks. Stephen Harper claimed years ago that Atlantic Canada has a culture of defeat, but it is the Conservatives who have a defeatist attitude toward our region.”

Of course, the critical questions here are obvious: why and why now? More important, does it make political or electoral sense? One is hard-pressed to explain why the Harper government is so hell-bent on making these changes. Besides an ideological or philosophical rationale, I can’t quite figure it out.

Perhaps the majority government secured by the Harper Conservatives last May presented them with the opportunity to do what they were unable to do under a minority situation. That is, to put in place a series of policy measures to seek greater efficiencies and marketization; but those same initiatives will also inflict substantial pain on Atlantic Canadians.

It is also well known that Stephen Harper has harboured negative impressions of Atlantic Canadians for many years now. We all remember that derogatory and simplistic “culture of defeat” remark that Cleary referenced.

One wonders whether these proposed changes are part of the Harper “hidden agenda” that many Atlantic Canadians have feared all along?

Some in his cabinet no doubt are perturbed — mostly for ideological reasons — about those in the fishery who purportedly take advantage of the EI system. And there are those who cringe at the thought of Russian immigrants being brought in to work in P.E.I. fish plants because Islanders, faced with some of the highest unemployment levels in Canada, won’t work there.

It’s worth remembering, though, that the governing Liberals sought to alter the EI rules in the mid-1990s and paid a huge price for doing so in the 1997 federal election. Not only were two high-profile cabinet ministers defeated, but the overall Atlantic caucus of Liberals was cut severely from 31 MPs to 11 (losing all 11 of its seats in Nova Scotia).

Are the Conservatives not worried about electoral retribution? Have they forgotten the political lessons of 1997? By moving forward with these controversial changes, are the Harper Conservatives willing to sacrifice the few gains that they made here in the 2011 election?

Maybe the Conservative Party believes that any losses in Atlantic Canada will be made up from the additional 30 seats that will be added across Canada, many in the West, for the October 2015 election. It’s also possible that the party’s electoral prospects will be boosted in places like Ontario (and further parts West) by cracking down on Atlantic Canadians.
More on link


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## a_majoor (30 May 2012)

The CPC has plenty of good works they can ponit to, and lots of approval of their programs from abroad as well. IF you are looking to "craft a narrative" then you could do worse than to look here:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v34n3/cprv34n3-1.html



> *We Can Cut Government: Canada Did*
> 
> Chris Edwards
> 
> ...



OTOH, before we pat ourselves too hard on the back, Canada has a Federal unfunded liability of over $500 billion (mostly Federal pensions and benefits to government workers), very high levels of personal indebtedness and of course, Ontario's rapidly increasing debt and credit downgrade watch could destabilize the rest of the nation since it is so large in proportion to the national debt (The current Provincial debt is heading towards $300 billion; the Nationa debt is just over $500 billion...).  

We can make similar observations about how the current models of healthcare and education consume far too much of the provincial budgets, especially considering the results (we may be better than the US in school test scores, but we are also competing with the Koreans, Chinese, Tiawanese etc.)

So overall, we are in a good starting position


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## a_majoor (6 Jun 2012)

A look at some of the drags on the system which limit Canadian productivity. This is something the government could start highlighting as a means of preparing the battlespace for 2015 and beyond:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/06/04/the-euro-loonie/



> *The euro-loonie*
> Special to Financial Post  Jun 4, 2012 – 8:52 PM ET
> 
> Our currency union has problems similar to the eurozone’s
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (8 Jun 2012)

This could probably go in the "Occupy" thread as well (or perhaps Libertarians or Election 2015), but if this signals a change in attitudes amongst the millennials, then it is a good sign for Canada. Pass this along to as many millennials as possible, a large enough fraction who think and act this way will be able to carry and lead the nation for another generation.:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/08/james-miller-forget-the-generational-war-blame-the-government/



> *James Miller: Forget the ‘generational war.’ Blame the government*
> James Miller, National Post  Jun 8, 2012 – 6:30 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 7, 2012 4:53 PM ET
> 
> Within the pages of the National Post, a spat has erupted between writers David Cravit, John Moore and Barbara Kay. In light of the Quebec student protests, Moore attested that millennials (people born between 1977 and 1995) are facing bleak prospects due to oldsters greedily emptying the public piggy bank of entitlements. Cravit, who is vice president of ZoomerMedia, responded with data showing the Boomer generation is still providing a significant amount financial assistance to their children. Kay conceded that while boomers are willing to fight the battle of the ballot box to maintain their benefits, today’s youth are desperately out of touch with how the real world operates.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (9 Jun 2012)

The _Globe and Mail's_ Kevin Carmichael goes _where angels fear to tread_ in a very good article in today's edition. Even the best, most productive and competitive Canadian businesses, he notes, are held back by very unproductive, uncompetitive and, therefore, overpriced _national infrastructure_ in three fields: air transport, bank business loans and telecommunications. 

I agree with him on the first and last: our air transport and telecommnications sectors would be (will be?) vastly changed (and not all Canadians will like all the changes) if/when more foreign competition is allowed. I'm not so sure our banking 'problem' is caused by the banks - it may be that Canadian business risks are, inherently, higher than in, say, the USA.


----------



## GAP (9 Jun 2012)

> it may be that Canadian business risks are, inherently, higher than in, say, the USA.



I would say, mainly by the size of the economic base, than anything else. We are small potatoes, doing well in a small patch environment. We do not and probably never will compare to the US.


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## Edward Campbell (13 Jun 2012)

Yesterday, in the _Ottawa Citizen_, Matthew Fisher (well known to many here for his coverage of our (Canadian) operations in Afghanistan) opined that _"Canada's status as a first-tier nation becomes stronger every day, while even its closest European cousins, Britain and France, are now paddling very hard against the prevailing economic currents to avoid slipping from the first tier ... the Harper government's reluctance to throw Canadian taxpayers' money at the continent's deep-seated economic problems at this time seems prudent ... [and] a fellow who helps to run a fund that invests large sums of money globally told me in London last week that the international economic out-look had become so grim this year that except for a few specific buys in energy, high-tech and high-end manufacturing, there was only a very short list now of countries worth investing in. They were, he said, China, South Korea, Singapore, Norway, Australia and Canada."_

Today, in the _Globe and Mail_, Jeffrey Simpson, ever petulant when Prime Minister Harper is given some credit for anything, fires back, saying, _"The Harper government, however, rejects the idea of contributing to an IMF fund. Canada, therefore, stands alone with the United States, which unlike Canada is in terrible fiscal shape. Worse, various Canadian politicians, rather than at least using a sympathetic tone, prefer a hectoring, morally superior one toward Europe – a tone ill-becoming a G8 country ... Canada is about to be spurned in its efforts to join the emerging trade bloc, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Canada's Commonwealth partners are worried the Harper government might wreck the next meeting in Sri Lanka because of its hectoring of that country's government, a policy that curries Conservatives' favour with the large Tamil community in Toronto. Canada's feeble non-climate-change policy is universally panned ... [and] It is all so penny-wise and pound foolish, especially for a country that once prided itself on punching above its weight and, more important, understood that this is a relatively small country with huge international interests. Now, Canada has retreated into an anglospheric worldview coupled with a focus on trade deals, but lacking any sense of a wider conception of international affairs."_

Simpson dreams, longingly for the resurrection of Pierre Trudeau and a return to the 1970s, when we were declining, precipitously, in _hard power_ but were becoming "cool." Fisher, equally longingly, dreams of an _Anglo_ resurgence led by America and Britain ~ something that is unlikely to happen in the lifetimes of most members here.

The _truth_, at least as I see it, is that Harper is tacking on an upwind course that aims to shift us away from Europe and even to decrease our strategic and economic reliance upon America and 
push us into a somewhat safer harbour across the Pacific.


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## GAP (13 Jun 2012)

oh....like not putting all our eggs in one basket....at least when one basket get dropped, you still have few eggs left...


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## Edward Campbell (13 Jun 2012)

Also worth a top to bottom read today, is this column, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail's *Report on Business*_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/the-unseemly-nature-of-the-welfare-state/article4253907/


> The unseemly nature of the welfare state
> 
> NEIL REYNOLDS
> 
> ...



_Coming Apart_ is worth a read.


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## Brad Sallows (14 Jun 2012)

Contributing to an IMF EU bailout fund is simply a transfer of money to Europeans.  Germans are not going to work to 67 and make transfer payments which enable others to retire at 60, so the number of nations in the currency union is going to shrink. Whatever consequences follow are going to happen.  I got used to this idea a long time ago; it is high time the highly and prestigiously educated political and media elites got it through their apparently thick skulls and started working on mitigating the consequences rather than pretending they can put off the reckoning indefinitely.

First-tier nations chart their own courses; they don't follow the politically correct and self-interested wishes of others.


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## a_majoor (15 Jun 2012)

Why worry about the Europeans when we have the NDP right here? Obviously they don't read newspapers or check websites, the UK has seen revenues dry up with their tax increases under David Cameron, and multiple US States have imposed "millionaire taxes" only to see "millionaires" vanish next tax season. Canada has seen a constant shift of business, capital and skilled labour to the west; both to follow opportunity and also to conserve their wealth in the generally lower taxed provincial jurisdictions.

Never the less, Ontario's NDP leader attempts to flow water uphill again (hopefully triggering an election that eliminates the McGuinty government once and for all). The anticipated results are in line with the historical evidence:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/14/kelly-mcparland-c-d-howe-pokes-a-big-hole-in-ndps-high-tax-fantasies/



> *Kelly McParland: C.D. Howe pokes a big hole in NDP’s high-tax fantasies*
> Kelly McParland  Jun 14, 2012 – 10:12 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 14, 2012 6:22 PM ET
> 
> It's not as easy to squeeze money from taxpayers as Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath thinks
> ...


----------



## foresterab (15 Jun 2012)

Taken from the Globe and Mail:
http://gold.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GI/20120614/escenic_4264748/stocks/news/&back_url=yes
Hopefully link works.

Sticking close to home paying off for Canadian manufacturers
KEVIN CARMICHAEL, RICHARD BLACKWELL AND TAVIA GRANT
18:43 EST Thursday, Jun 14, 2012
  

Against the odds, Canadian factories suddenly are among the busiest in the world.

In the United States, President Barack Obama preaches weekly about a manufacturing renaissance, and Germany?s ability to compete with lower cost rivals in Asia continues to astonish. Yet neither of those countries is hiring more factory workers now than Canada, a country burdened by relatively high labour costs, a strong currency and weak productivity.

?Things are flying,? says Kelly Youngdale, who has increased staff at his label-making business in Ottawa to 45, from less than 30 a couple of years ago.

Canada created almost 115,000 manufacturing jobs over the past six months, the most over any similar period on record, according to Statistics Canada. The surge is also the biggest increase among the 34 rich countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, says Stéfane Marion, chief economist at National Bank Financial in Montreal. Canadian factories operated at 81.3 per cent of potential capacity in the first quarter, the highest level since the end of 2007, Statistics Canada said in a separate report released Thursday.

The strength in manufacturing defies conventional thinking about Canada?s economy: at a time when factory owners are being told the future lies in spreading their goods throughout emerging markets, factories are getting a boost from sales at home.

For more than a year, the Bank of Canada has cited the country?s poor competitiveness as one of the reasons for leaving interest rates at ultralow levels. In April, Mark Carney, the central bank governor, told an audience in Waterloo, Ont., that the Canadian economy?s immediate prospects were limited because companies do too little business in the fast-growing emerging markets such as China and Brazil. The extent to which Canadian companies ?refocus, retool and retrain will do much to determine how rapidly our prosperity grows in the decades ahead,? Mr. Carney said.

But for now, at least, Canada?s factories appear to be benefiting from their notorious contentment with sticking close to home. The jump in hiring occurred with little obvious help from exports. For example, international shipments of machinery and equipment were little changed through April compared with 2011, according to Statistics Canada. Yet factory jobs have increased for six straight months, accounting for 10.4 per cent of Canada?s 17.5 million working population in May, the most in more than a year.

Mr. Youngdale?s Label Innovation Inc., which posted sales gains of 19 per cent in 2010 and 32 per cent in 2011, does almost all of its business in Canada, where the economy has rebounded from the financial crisis better than most of its peers.

Label Innovation does ship about 15 per cent of its production to the U.S., whose economy is growing at an annual rate of about 2 per cent. That?s modest growth, but better than Europe, which is struggling to stay out of recession. China, India and Brazil, the high flyers of the global economy for the past several years, are falling back to earth as the European debt crisis takes a toll on global trade.

?Our Canadian business is strong, while our global business is less strong,? says Mel Svendsen, chief executive of Standen?s Ltd., a Calgary-based maker of vehicle springs and suspensions for trucks and trailers. ?A lot of Canadian manufacturers have had to reduce their participation in the U.S. markets with the stronger dollar, so those that are focusing primarily on Canada will show some resiliency and growth.?

In Waterloo, Mr. Carney urged Canadian companies to take greater advantage of the boom in oil, mining and agriculture. The strength of those industries, which are concentrated in Western Canada, represents an outlet while the global economy finds a new footing. Sales of petroleum and coal products increased 4.5 per cent to $7.5-billion in March, the highest level since July, 2008, according to Statistics Canada.

Factories that service the energy sector are ?busier than all get out,? says Harvie Andre, the former chief executive of Calgary-based Wenzel Downhole Tools Ltd., which has a standing help-wanted ad for machinists to help craft its drilling equipment.

There?s reason to be skeptical about whether Canada?s manufacturing strength will last.

Mr. Andre, who now works as a consultant for Wenzel, says there are growing worries that the drop in oil prices this year will result in less capital spending by drillers in 2013.

That would be a blow to the manufacturing industry because the recent gains aren?t widespread, nor have they made up for the losses that occurred during the recession. There were 1.8 million factory workers in May, compared with 2.1 million in January, 2007.

?In 21 years in this business, we are treading in waters we have never been in before,? says Darren McDonald, president of Nova Doors and Windows Ltd., a maker of doors and windows based in Dartmouth, N.S. Mr. McDonald says 2011 was ?horrible,? and so far this year business is only coming in ?dribs and drabs.?

The Canadian market is probably too small to support a significant manufacturing revival. But for now, it?s the best bet for many companies. Guy Bianchi, who runs MR Kitchens, a kitchen-cabinet maker based outside Ottawa, says he hasn?t received an order from any of his U.S. distributors in four years.

But he?s doing fine in Ottawa, thanks to the housing boom, boosting his work force to 55 in the past few months, a 20-per-cent increase. While the housing market likely will cool, Mr. Bianchi is betting the renovation market will remain strong: He plans to build 10 retail outlets over the next eight years stretching from Ottawa to Windsor.

?We want a bigger piece of the pie,? he says.


I find this interesting as the employeers cited are medium sized independent operators that appear to be fairly nimble on chasing new markets...whether internally Canada or at least examining international oportunities.    The only questions to me are a) is how widespread the hiring is and b) can they keep the momentum going once top notch employees become scarce.

Either way..a positive note.


----------



## Edward Campbell (18 Jun 2012)

There's bad news and good news, according to this column by Neil Reynolds which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from he _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/democracies-cant-live-in-perpetual-stimulus/article4299446/


> Democracies can't live in perpetual stimulus
> 
> NEIL REYNOLDS
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




The bad news is that we (Canada) are amongst the 10 most indebted OECD countries (Reynolds doesn't say that (he quotes _Time_ as saying "the developed democracies" but I'm about 99.9% certain that there are non-OECD members in worse straits than even Japan).  The good news is that we are _only_ #10.

The key point, made by Mr. DeMuth is: _“This_ [debt]_ [is] catnip for practising politicians because it offers [a way to provide] constituents with more government services than taxes to pay for them.”_ That's what Trudeau did in the 1970s, what Mulroney slowed in the '80s, what Chrétien continued to provide in the '90s (albeit by making the provinces pay) and what Chrétien, Martin and Harper continued until 2009. Only now is Prime MInister Harper moving us, I hope, in the right direction: smaller, less intrusive government that spends less.


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## a_majoor (19 Jun 2012)

This government is doing some sterling work in getting economic diversification under weigh. TPP, free trade with Europe, Free trade initiatives with a constellation of countires and even opening up choke points between the Canada/US border are all great initiatives. Collectively, they have the potential to open up many new avenues of approach for Canadian business and investment, and even if the global economy is going down, we have arranged to spread the blow among as many different places as possible (with the greater possibility of being hooked up to whoever rises first):

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/19/kelly-mcparland-stephen-harper-has-good-reason-to-offer-lectures-to-europe/#Comments



> Kelly McParland: Stephen Harper has good reason to offer lectures to Europe
> Kelly McParland  Jun 19, 2012 – 10:20 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 19, 2012 11:56 AM ET
> 
> European leaders are evidently growing testy at the lectures directed their way from Canada and the United States. Stephen Harper and Barack Obama are the only two G20 leaders who are refusing to kick in more cash to the International Monetary Fund as a safety valve for Europe, and Mr. Harper suggested Monday the “great majority” of leaders support Canada’s argument that Europe can solve its own problems.
> ...


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## a_majoor (22 Jun 2012)

The end of supply management and effectively increasing people's disposable income by @ $300 +/year will more than balance the losses to the farm industry when the barriers come down. Farther upthread there is an article from the FP which indicates how counterproductive this is; a yoghurt manufacturer would like to set up shop in Canada and buy lots of milk, but cannot due to quotas. At the same time, farmers are forced to sell their milk as animal feed at a lower price than the yoghurt maker is willing to pay. Consumers _and_ farmers lose under this scheme:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/21/john-ivison-trans-pacific-partnership-and-low-political-costs-mean-supply-managements-days-are-numbered/



> *John Ivison: Kiss goodbye to supply management*
> John Ivison  Jun 21, 2012 – 2:36 PM ET | Last Updated: Jun 21, 2012 9:28 PM ET
> 
> Martha Hall Findlay's report is the first to examine the first to address the question of political will of eliminating supply management.
> ...


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## GAP (22 Jun 2012)

Had a discussion with an egg producer a couple of weeks ago. He was horrified that he would not be entitled to his entitlements. Didn't want any part of supply and demand, just wanted his guarantee.....he's always had it, he should always have it. 




There is no cure for stupid.


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## Edward Campbell (22 Jun 2012)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> The end of supply management and effectively increasing people's disposable income by @ $300 +/year will more than balance the losses to the farm industry when the barriers come down. Farther upthread there is an article from the FP which indicates how counterproductive this is; a yoghurt manufacturer would like to set up shop in Canada and buy lots of milk, but cannot due to quotas. At the same time, farmers are forced to sell their milk as animal feed at a lower price than the yoghurt maker is willing to pay. Consumers _and_ farmers lose under this scheme:
> 
> http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/21/john-ivison-trans-pacific-partnership-and-low-political-costs-mean-supply-managements-days-are-numbered/




Liberal star Martha Hall Findlay is, undoubtedly correct, and getting _"forced"_ out of supply management by evil foreigners is, also undoubtedly, a timely opportunity. The only thing I find just a wee bit strange is that a Toronto-Liberal should see the obvious. The _established_ Toronto-Liberal view, the _received wisdom_, is given by the _Globe and Mail's_ Jeffrey Simpson in a column in which he says: _"no chink exists in the political armour defending supply management, either in Ottawa or at the provincial level. In Quebec, especially, the support is ubiquitous, in part because the producers are in a union – l’Union des producteurs agricoles du Québec – that is arguably the most powerful lobby group in Canada, along with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Any assault on supply management would be seen as an assault on Quebec, and we know what emotional wallop that punch brings ... [and] As usual, Canada will use every tactic to delay, frustrate and block any changes in order to keep dairy and poultry farmers off the streets of Montreal and Ottawa."_

He also notes that Prime Minister Harper is a committed free trader and that some suggest that he _"actually wants to use the TPP to destroy supply management."_ He pooh-poohs that idea because he (Simpson) still believes that Stephen Harper _"must also see the perils of arousing Quebec."_ At the risk of repeating myself: a Conservative government can, indeed must aim to "govern without Quebec" - not "against Quebec" just with only a very, very few Quebec seats. But Ms. Hall Findlay's paper, in my opinion, more accurately takes account of the real political calculus: the few ridings involved are not enough to stay Harper's hand. Ridding Canada of supply management is a long term winner for all of us.


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## Kirkhill (23 Jun 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Liberal star Martha Hall Findlay is, undoubtedly correct, and getting _"forced"_ out of supply management by evil foreigners is, also undoubtedly, a timely opportunity. The only thing I find just a wee bit strange is that a Toronto-Liberal should see the obvious.



Here's your answer Argyll: 



> The former Liberal MP’s research paper...Written for Jack Mintz’s School of Public Policy *at the University of Calgary*,



Proof positive that hydrocarbons in their natural state and sour gas are far less hazardous to cogent thought than all that exhausted CO2 generated by the madding crowds and their chattering preachers in Toronto.   >

If it wasn't for having to put up with them until they got their heads straight I might almost be inclined to invite Jeffrey Simpson and Peter Mansbridge to bring their buddies out here... Maybe we could put them up in a detention facility and call it a retreat.


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## Edward Campbell (23 Jun 2012)

More on Martha Hall Findlay's foray into honesty in this column, by Andrew Coyne, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Ottawa Citizen_:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/quality+short+supply+honesty/6828770/story.html


> A quality in short supply: honesty
> *Hall Findlay's take on supply management shows leadership*
> 
> By Andrew Coyne, Postmedia News
> ...




I agree with Coyne, especially with:

1. _"While far from the most pressing issue before the nation, the divide between experts and evidence, on the one hand, and the political class, on the other, gives it unusual symbolic weight. Indeed, it can serve as a kind of litmus test, a benchmark of political seriousness. If you cannot bring yourself to say it is wrong to make poor families pay three times the market price of milk to prop up a handful of wealthy farmers, you are not in the business of serious politics."_ and

2. Hall Findlay is showing leadership.

I suspect Hall Findlay's leadership, real though it is, is also just about as welcome as screen-doors in a submarine. I expect that Rae, Trudeau, Garneau, Coderre _et al_, not to mention Mulciar's minions, will dump on her from great heights.


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## GAP (24 Jun 2012)

What’s Behind Canada’s Entry to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks?
Published On Sun Jun 24 2012
Article Link

Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama formally extended an invitation to Canada to join the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations, a proposed trade deal that includes the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam (Mexico was also added last week). Supporters have lauded the TPP as potentially the world’s most important trade pact and the Canadian government spent months crossing the globe to lobby for an invitation.

Yet dig beneath the heady promises and the benefits for Canada are hard to identify. The price of admission was very steep – Canada appears to have agreed to conditions that grant it second-tier status – and the economic benefits from improved access to TPP economies are likely to be relatively minor since we already have free-trade agreements with four of the ten participants.

Given those conditions, why aggressively pursue entry into the negotiations? The reason stems less from gaining barrier-free access to a handful of relatively small economies and far more about using the TPP as a backdoor mechanism to promote regulatory changes in Canada.

Given Canada’s late entry into the TPP process, the U.S. was able to extract two onerous conditions that Prime Minister Stephen Harper downplayed as the “accession process.” First, Canada will not be able to reopen any chapters where agreement has already been reached among the current nine TPP partners. This means Canada has already agreed to be bound by TPP terms without having had any input. Since the TPP remains secret, the government can’t even tell us what has been agreed upon.

Second, Canada has second-tier status in the negotiations as the U.S. has stipulated that Canada will not have “veto authority” over any chapter. This means that should the other nine countries agree on terms, Canada would be required to accept them.

This condition could be used to stop Canada from joining forces with another country on a tough issue during the late stages of the negotiation. For example, Canada and New Zealand both have copyright terms that last for the life of the author plus an additional 50 years. The U.S. has proposed that the TPP mandate a term of life plus 70 years. While Canada and New Zealand might be able to jointly block the extension, the U.S. could pressure New Zealand to cave on the issue and effectively force Canada to accept the change.

These tough entry conditions might be worth it if Canada stood to benefit significantly from new market access. However, Canada already has free trade agreements with the U.S., Mexico, Chile, and Peru. That leaves just six countries, which currently represent less than one per cent of Canadian exports, as the net gain. In fact, there has been recent speculation that Chile is prepared to drop out of the negotiations precisely because it already has a free trade agreement with the U.S. and sees little upside in making major concessions in order to gain better access to the remaining TPP markets.

With Canada already surrendering negotiation leverage and few important markets at stake, our participation is less about other TPP countries and much more about us. Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce applauded Canada’s entry into the TPP, expressing the hope that it would force further changes to Canadian intellectual property laws less than 24 hours after Bill C-11 passed in the House of Commons.

For the Canadian government, the TPP offers cover for major reforms to supply management, the combination of tariffs, quotas and price supports that increase costs for dairy, eggs, chicken, turkey and broiler hatching eggs. The system has been politically untouchable for decades, but using a backdoor approach of mandating change through trade agreement might provide the mechanism to garner the necessary popular support.

While backers maintain that the TPP will open up new markets to Canadian companies, the reality is that the agreement’s biggest impact is likely to come from major domestic legislative reforms that would otherwise face considerable opposition and serious political risk.
end


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## Edward Campbell (24 Jun 2012)

GAP said:
			
		

> What’s Behind Canada’s Entry to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks?
> Published On Sun Jun 24 2012
> Article Link
> 
> ...




While I agree, broadly, with Prof Geist's conclusions (the biggest immediate "gain" will come from _forcing_ us to change ourselves) we must consider two things:

1. Michael Geist has an axe to grind - he is a specialist in IT law and changes to Copyright are matters of great concern to him; and

2. The TPP is _Free Trade 2.0_ - it, and its provisions, will be the new "gold standard" which will, eventually bind China and India. We need to be on the inside looking out, not on the outside, with our nose pressed against the window, looking in.


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## GAP (24 Jun 2012)

One of the issues I heard was the issue over who's  laws apply in the event of a dispute....(As It Happens - CBC). 

According to the interviewee if a foreign company in Canada loses money because of a change in Canadian Law, they can sue under the TPP......I need to find that clip in the archives, but the whole scenerio, if true, put a real chill on the TPP for me....


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## GAP (24 Jun 2012)

Here's the clip from 2:00 to 8:30 min 

http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/popupaudio.html?clipIds=2249383938,2249384873,2249385432

Here's the original topic webpage
More Power to Corporations to Attack Nations
http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=5411&frcrld=1

Here's the whole TPP page
http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=3129

I don't know much about "Global Trade Watch" and what the agenda is, but some of the arguments are interesting....


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## Edward Campbell (24 Jun 2012)

I don't know enough, yet, about the TPP to comment. But: remember the (still ongoing) hysteria about the NAFTA and the provisions which, if you believe Maude Barlow _et al_, oblige us to sell the US as much oil as they demand. Of course, no such provision exists; the provision which does exist states that we may not discriminate against the USA relative to other export markets; it is, essentially, a copy of established international trade law. My suspicion is that this will end up being similar.


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## foresterab (25 Jun 2012)

http://gold.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GI/20120624/escenic_4366870/stocks/news/&back_url=yes

Bitter battle rages over Canada’s sugar industry
SEAN SILCOFF
19:01 EST Sunday, Jun 24, 2012
  

OTTAWA — Greaves Jams & Marmalades in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., buys about 120 tonnes of sugar a year – enough to make 1 million jars of preserves.

Suffice to say, production manager Rudy Doerwald keeps close tabs on the price of the sweetener, but with just two suppliers to choose from, he has no choice but to take what’s offered.

“The price they dictate is unfortunately the price I have to pay,” he said. “I am just held hostage and there’s not much I can do.”

Mr. Doerwald’s gripe is simple, but finding a solution for Canadian sugar users like Greaves has proven next to impossible due to the peculiar way the world’s two most powerful economies protect their sugar industries.

For 15 years, Rogers Sugar and Redpath Sugar had the Canadian refined sugar business to themselves, protected by trade barriers that kept out subsidized sugar from the United States and Europe. For bakers, drink makers and confectioners such as Greaves, that has meant having to pay about 10 per cent to 15 per cent more than the world price.

After years of complaining to Canadian trade authorities, businesses that rely on refined sugar thought they had scored sweet relief in 2010 when the Canadian International Trade Tribunal broke from past rulings by allowing sugar from Europe to enter Canada duty-free.

But that victory was short-lived: Last month, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled the tribunal failed to show how it reached its decision to drop a 78-per-cent duty on the price of sugar from the U.K., Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands and another 22-cent-per-kilogram duty on all European sugar. It set aside the 2010 decision, asking the tribunal to reopen the case.

It’s the first time in the tribunal’s 23-year history such a decision has been overturned, and it came as good news for Rogers and Redpath, who argue they need protection from European producers who dump their product – selling it abroad for far less than at home.

“Everyone agrees the Europeans dump sugar,” Redpath president Jonathan Bamberger said. “The issue is whether there is a likelihood of material injury to the Canadian industry as a result of dumped sugar coming in. We believe there is.”

The case underscores the tricky business of balancing the interests of users and producers in one of world’s most warped industries. U.S. and European governments protect their cane and beet growers and refiners with import quotas, restrictions and price supports, leaving captive, closed markets paying well above world prices. “Sugar is probably the most protected, coddled and subsidized agricultural crop of any” in the U.S., said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies with the Cato Institute, a U.S. libertarian think-tank.

The policies compel U.S. and EU producers to refine millions of tonnes more per year than needed – enough to supply Canada many times over. That spectre convinced the CITT in 1995 that low-priced sugar would be dumped in Canada without trade protections, after foreigners captured a 15 per cent share. That decision was extended in 2000 and again in 2005.

With the trade barriers, Canadians typically pay more than the world price, Mr. Bamberger acknowledged. He added, though, that the availability of non-subsidized sugar from Latin America keeps prices here in check: “The discipline of the world market severely limits the possibility of [Rogers or Redpath] charging an economic rent because of a duopoly. It’s not zero, but it’s a very narrow amount.”

While the U.S. system has changed little – the U.S. Senate last week voted down a proposal to reduce the scope of protections, and exports remain subject to a 78 per cent Canadian duty – the EU in 2006 cut production quotas and lowered support prices for raw sugar. Production, exports and prices fell – at first.

The CITT felt the reforms would moderate EU exports, and ruled producers would likely send spare sugar to closer markets in the Middle East and Asia, not Canada.

But Rogers and Redpath appealed, saying the evidence instead suggested the EU would crank up exports, particularly to Canada, and harm the domestic refiners, which only operate at about 75 per cent of capacity. That could mean closing one of Canada’s four refineries and losing jobs, said Sandra Marsden, president of the Canadian Sugar Institute, the refiners’ lobby group.

The refiners’ fears appear to have been borne out. In the past two years, European prices have soared to the point where refined sugar recently cost 60 per cent more than the world price. Production has surged, leaving the EU with 5 million tonnes of surplus sugar. Producers have exceeded by hundreds of thousands of tonnes the EU’s trade commitment to limit subsidized exports, a move sanctioned by Brussels. “It’s better than it has been, but sugar is still heavily subsidized and production is being dumped on world markets,” said Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Centre for International Economic Policy, a free-market think tank in Brussels.

That’s hardly encouraging to Mr. Doerwald. “Everything I do, I always try to double or triple-source,” he said. “I really can’t go anywhere else [for sugar]. This is the only way I know.” If the CITT reverses its earlier decision and restores the duty on European sugar that will remain the case for years to come.

----------------------------------

SWEET TALK

Refineries:

Rogers Sugar Inc. (Brands: Rogers Sugar, Lantic)

Vancouver: Cane sugar refinery

Montreal: Cane sugar refinery

Taber, Alta.: Sugar beet processing plant

Redpath Sugar Ltd.

Toronto: Cane sugar refinery and blending facility

Niagara Falls, Ont.: Blending facility

------------------

BY THE NUMBERS

85%: Approximate share of Canadian-produced sugar used for food manufacturing and food service

70%: Increase in price of raw sugar, 2007-2011

1,000: Approximate number of workers involved in sugar production, including about 240 involved in sugar beet farming in Alberta

$3.26: Average retail price of a 2 kg bag of sugar in April, 2012, a 37-per-cent increase over April, 2008

Sources: Canadian Sugar Institute, Statistics Canada, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Canada


We've already had verdicts on the Canadian Wheat Board...current discussions on dairy products and next sugar???  Of course the amount of subsidized product on the market dwarfs Canadian producer costs so not sure what the balence would be .


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## GAP (26 Jun 2012)

Breaking down the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal
BARRIE McKENNA The Globe and Mail Tuesday, Jun. 19 2012
Article Link

Where did the TPP come from?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is unique among free-trade deals because it was created, not primarily to break down trade walls, but as a gold standard to which countries could aspire. The agreement was born in 2005 out of the achingly slow progress towards freer trade within the cumbersome 21-country collective known as the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum, or APEC. Progress was so plodding that insiders disdainfully called APEC “four adjectives in search of a noun.”

That all changed when the deal’s founding four members – New Zealand, Brunei, Chile and Singapore – completed a deal, then known as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement. What the so-called P4 have in common is that they are all small, trade-oriented economies with relatively few barriers between them. In 2008, the United States, Australia, Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam joined. The agreement was later renamed the TPP, soon becoming a top priority for the Obama administration. The nine partners want a deal by year end, but that timetable is almost certain to slip, especially now that Canada and Mexico have joined the party.

Why Canada wants a seat

The TPP is the state of the art of free-trade deals. Think of it as NAFTA 2.0 for the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region, with strong provisions on intellectual property (copyright, patent protection and the like) and harmonizing regulations. It’s also specially designed to be open to an ever-expanding number of new members.

It’s also seen as a major way to boost trade with Asia. The initial prize isn’t China, which isn’t a member and likely won’t be any time soon. But the TPP does include some of the most dynamic Asian economies, including Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. And by this time next year Japan may join the talks, creating a monster trading bloc.

For Mr. Harper, the TPP is as much about keeping pace with U.S. exports in this increasingly vital part of the world as it is about diversifying trade beyond the United States. Canada has already slipped behind the United States, which recently completed a free-trade deal with South Korea. Canada doesn’t have a single free-trade deal in Asia. The backdrop to TPP hoopla is that global free-trade talks – known as the Doha round – have stalled. Trading countries such as Canada, Australia and the United States see the agreement as a way to keep the free-trade momentum going, while preventing a backslide to protectionism.

The catch

An invitation to the table isn't the same as negotiations. And Canada hasn't yet conceded anything to the other TPP members, and vice-versa. Nor has it taken anything off the table.

To secure a TPP invitation, Ottawa has signalled that it's willing to put some important cards on the table. Those cards include lifting the protective-tariff wall that shields the roughly 15,000 dairy and chicken farmers - something sought by the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
More on link


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## Edward Campbell (26 Jul 2012)

This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is related to an number of threads but, in my estimation,  most connected here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/former-australian-pm-sees-role-for-canada-in-world-tilting-toward-china/article4441644/


> Former Australian PM sees role for Canada in world tilting toward China
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
> ...




Two key points:

First: The Trans Pacific Partnership is, indeed, as the article suggests, _"one way to manage China" by embracing its neighbours, "which is an unstated purpose of the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks, an ambitious set of trade negotiations involving the United States, Australia and a range of Latin American, Asian and Pacific nations. Canada recently won American approval to join the talks, but the agreement could force this country to abandon protection for its politically powerful dairy and poultry industries."_ There is a parallel between classical _containment_, as proposed by George Kennan in 1946/47, and our (the American led West's) current views on China. But, in my opinion it is the wrong way to manage China. The TPP is a good idea, on its trade merits alone - it will be better when, eventually, China joins, too. The best way to "manage" China is to engage, openly and honestly, on all fronts.

Second: The proposed CNOOC/Nexen deal is a new _frontier_ - and not just for Canada.

There is a two article debate in the _Globe and Mail_ about the CNOOC/Nexen deal. On one side, former Conservative cabinet minister (and still possible future leader and potential prime minister) Jim Prentice argues for "following the rules" and letting the chips fall where they may in an article entitled Nexen deal: Canada must remain open for business. On the other Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, argues for "reciprocity" in his article which is headlined as Nexen deal: The only standard is reciprocity.

Jim Prentice is about 90% right and Roger Martin is about 90% wrong. Free trade or just freer trade, even unilateral free trade, is always - so history shows - better than tariffs and "managed" trade, better for all partners, even the one that "gives" the most. The major net effect of free trade is to give the individual more money which (s)he will spend, which creates jobs, and, more importantly, save and invest, which creates even more jobs. Professor Martin is arguing a totally failed economic, political and strategic case - he is harking back to the Trudeau era, which was a political and economic disaster for Canada. Martin is parroting the very worst of American protectionist thinking - it, protectionism, is an incredibly stupid and dangerous idea which never serves the common good and often unleashes great evil on then world. At the risk of being dogmatic: protectionism, all protectionism, including Sir John A's _national policy_, always does more harm than good; it (protectionism) has *no* redeeming values for anyone, ever.


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## Kirkhill (26 Jul 2012)

There is still the issue, when discussing China as the World's Largest Economy, that that title is earned by dint of their very large population.  The national pool of wealth is literally a mile wide and a millimeter thick.  A penny still matters in China.  Many folks over there don't have that much to give.  They feel it every time the Government spends their money overseas buying Canadian oil companies.

How long will they put up with those expenditures, sold on a combination of necessity and national pride, when their coal mines, schools and dams are collapsing; the rural economies are neglected and corruption still favours the production of Mandarins?


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## Edward Campbell (26 Jul 2012)

In her new book, Winner Take All: China's Race For Resources And What It Means For The World]http://www.amazon.ca/Winner-Take-All-Chinas-Resources/dp/1443407402/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343311177&sr=1-1]Winner Take All: China's Race For Resources And What It Means For The World, Dambisa Moyo, who is pretty respectable economist, posits that China has a long term resource _strategy_ and that the very sort term opportunity costs are well covered by it.


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## Brad Sallows (26 Jul 2012)

>Free trade or just freer trade, even unilateral free trade, is always - so history shows - better than tariffs and "managed" trade, better for all partners, even the one that "gives" the most.

As a matter of economics, that is a valid statement.  As a matter of national interests, technology, property, and security, it is not.  That is irrespective of whether the trading partner is China.

China, like the US, is a large country which has a lot of weight to throw around.  China, unlike the US, is not a relatively open country.  China has entirely too many problems enforcing intellectual property laws.


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## Edward Campbell (26 Jul 2012)

Brad, I'm happy to agree that free or even freer trade, especially with China, can cause some vexing intellectual property problems. But I still think the "national interest," including "security" interests are better served by free trade than by protectionism in any of its guises. Our "national interest" was and still is well served by free trade with the USA. Now, Max Baucus is still in the US Senate, trying, sometimes managing to convince the US Government to act against international law and its own best interests and he pursues his own protectionist agenda; and, recently, two pissant US state representatives convinced the US Federal Maritime Commission to release a report that accused Prince Rupert of enjoy unfair natural advantages over US West Coast ports - the report should embarrass every American with an IQ above six; but those horrid examples of American stupidity do not alter the fact that we, and the Americans, are better off, in (almost?) every respect because we have a pretty comprehensive free trade deal. An even more comprehensive free trade deal, that includes e.g. better labour mobility and more common product standards would provide more benefits.

The way to change China, to make it a more desirable trading partner, is to engage it and to lead by example. Hiding behind protectionist trade barriers is bad economics and bad public policy - but freer trade is a political project and good public policy requires courage, so ...  :-\


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## Edward Campbell (26 Jul 2012)

More, on vaguely related issues, in this column by Andrew Coyne, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Ottawa Citizen_:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Coyne+Christy+Clark+Northern+Gateway+benefit+extortion/6989837/story.html


> Christy Clark, Northern Gateway and the old 'net benefit' extortion racket
> 
> 
> By Andrew Coyne, Postmedia News
> ...




I agree with Coyne that:

1. Premier Clark is trying to commit extortion and she is playing a very weak hand; and

2. We need to treat the Chinese potential buyers in a firm but fair manner - in the same way we want to treat all owners, Canadian or foreign. And that does mean that we want _transparent_ transactions.


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## Kirkhill (26 Jul 2012)

And, Ladies and Gentlemen, we are open for bids.... who'll give me....

Christy and Allison - that is an old game.  Hopefully, for my sake as an Alberta resident, Allison plays a better hand than Joey Smallwood did.  I'm not too bothered about this latest round of negotiations.

But China, that still presents me with too many unknowns to be comfortable.

It is one thing for a country to be open to business, to investment.  It is important that Canada stay open to private investors, including Chinese ones.

It is difficult for me to accept State investors in Canadian affairs.  State agencies have just too many levers available to them that private citizens don't.  Not least of which is the arrogation of the use of force, the wealth to afford it and the authorization to employ it.

Canadian oil companies can choose to sell or not sell their oil to private concerns. They can break contracts, if they are willing to accept the penalty clauses, as circumstances dictate.  

Russia chooses to accept private investors like BP onto their turf and then declares sovereign rights to break contracts, deny the investors the revenues from their investments and penalize them even as they throw them out of the country.  It is not a course that I would like Canada to adopt but it is a course that Canada could adopt - and that fact is always present during any negotiation.    

Russia acts in that manner, and Canada could act in that manner, because BP's investors can't immediately put a force in the field to support them in their discussions with the state of Russia.  They would have to appeal to the British and Dutch parliaments who would then have to figure out how to get a useful force into Siberia.

China, in my opinion, is more inclined to a Russian interpretation of the rule of law than a British or Dutch interpretation.

If Canada decided it were in the national interest to abrogate an agreement with CNOOC, for whatever reason, perhaps ignoring sanctions against Iran, and stop the flow of oil to China, is it not beyond reason that China would act to secure its own interests?

How about appealing to the UN that Energy is an essential commodity and a right and it cannot be cut off.  I believe we signed off on a clause in the old US-Can Free Trade Agreement?

How about declaring that CNOOC installations and Chinese nationals effectively constituted a commercial colony that needed protecting from Canadian Bandits?

How about China declaring that they needed to act to assist their First Nation allies who granted them right of way for pipelines and installations?

And I don't as readily agree that our good buddies to the South will always act in our best interest.  With them sitting on a fair number of Gigajoules of energy these days SOME American individuals may consider it Canadian Oil wellspent to buy American peace.


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## Edward Campbell (27 Jul 2012)

Two more articles about the (proposed) CNOOC/Nexen deal from the _Globe and Mail_:

1. An opinion piece by Derek Burney, a former Canadian ambassador to the United States, and Fen Hampson, a distinguished fellow and director of global security at the Centre for International Governance Innovation  (Prof Hampson is on sabbatical from Carleton University) entitled A dramatic bid, a strategic response. Burney and Hampson provide a clear analysis of the issue and a sensible proposal for assessing all such deals - more sensible than the current "net benefit" test; and

2. A story about a bit of blatant protectionism being proposed by US Democratic Sen Chuck Shumer in which he ... urges Washington to block China’s bid for Nexen]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/us-senator-urges-washington-to-block-chinas-bid-for-nexen/article4443807/]... urges Washington to block China’s bid for Nexen.


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## GR66 (27 Jul 2012)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> And, Ladies and Gentlemen, we are open for bids.... who'll give me....
> 
> Christy and Allison - that is an old game.  Hopefully, for my sake as an Alberta resident, Allison plays a better hand than Joey Smallwood did.  I'm not too bothered about this latest round of negotiations.
> 
> ...



Are you suggesting that China would potentially send militarily forces to Canada in defence of CNOOC in the case of an economic dispute between the company and the Government of Canada?  I'll admit that I do not have a military background but I do consider myself fairly well read and educated and I do not believe for a moment that China has either the interest or capability in launching any direct military action against Canada.  Could they counter any actions we take against their corporations with counter-actions against our economic interests in China?  Of course.  Could/would they make use of every international trade and legal forum possible to advance their interest within the framework of those legal international bodies?  Of course...and so would we.  China certainly has economic muscle and I don't doubt that they will flex it if they feel their core interests are threatened, but I think the suggestion that we could end up with PLA troops guarding Canadian oil pipelines to ensure we don't turn off the taps quite silly.


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## Brad Sallows (27 Jul 2012)

In view of the fact information has leaked into the public sphere that the Chinese are trying to buy the services of our own MPs, I am not impressed by apples-to-oranges comparisons of agents of the US government working to further US interests from within the US government.

China is acting like a colonial power in the modern post-colonial era and the force feedback mechanisms between "enterprise" and "state" are entirely too well-coupled for the major Chinese corporations to be treated as if they were Microsoft.

If the country in question were Belize, I would not care.  China is simply too large to be treated with naive disregard.


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## Kirkhill (27 Jul 2012)

GR66

My position is similar to Brad's CNOOC is not Microsoft.  

It may indeed be silly to contemplate the prospect of the PLA trained CNOOC PSCs on the Northern Gateway but the prospect is not inconceivable.

It is not Intent.  It is Capability....... and, in criminal terms, it is Motive.


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## SeaKingTacco (27 Jul 2012)

I actually liked Kirkhill's post.  It made me think of the Canton system and wonder if the long Chinese memory is not extracting some revenge, 100 years hence.


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## Edward Campbell (28 Jul 2012)

SeaKingTacco said:
			
		

> I actually liked Kirkhill's post.  It made me think of the Canton system and wonder if the long Chinese memory is not extracting some revenge, 100 years hence.




It is interesting that China is the only country I have ever visited that has a _national_ museum dedicated to _humiliation_. It is near Guangzhou (Canton) and it 'celebrates' the Opium Wars. It focuses, partially, on the Chinese officials who tried to prevent the opium trade but, mostly, it tells the stories of 100 years of humiliation at the hands of the foreigners - mainly the Brits.


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## Kirkhill (28 Jul 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> It is interesting that China is the only country I have ever visited that has a _national_ museum dedicated to _humiliation_. It is near Guangzhou (Canton) and it 'celebrates' the Opium Wars. It focuses, partially, on the Chinese officials who tried to prevent the opium trade but, mostly, it tells the stories of 100 years of humiliation at the hands of the foreigners - mainly the Brits.



That is curious.  Does it speak to your oft repeated comment: "Culture Matters"?

Generally our politicians appeal to positive emotions (at least officially) like pride.  The Tories "War of 1812" campaign comes immediately to mind.  On the negative front they are more likely to evoke guilt than hate.

Do the Chinese respond better to the goad?

Actually that conversation should actually be transferred to the China superthread.


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## Edward Campbell (28 Jul 2012)

The Chinese teach the whole "century of humiliation" thing in, at least, elementary and middle school - once in each I think. The aim is to instill even greater _nationalism_ in a society that is, culturally, already quite chauvinistic. Children are taught that the Qing Dynasty failed China by providing bad governance, allowing the foreigners to take what they wanted without paying an appropriate price. "Unequal treaties" and "extraterritoriality" are stressed and children are taught that modern China will "never again" (shades of Israel) allow foreigners to interfere in China's domestic affairs.

This leads to a foreign policy issue. The schools tell children that:

1. China will, never again, allow foreigners to dictate to it; and

2. China, will equally, eschew interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

The latter _principle_ helps to explain why China vetoes so many UNSC resolutions.


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## Kirkhill (28 Jul 2012)

China's lack of interest in the internal affairs of sovereign states is encouraging.  Thank goodness they got over all that silliness about Maoism, Marxist-Leninism and exporting the revolution to the proletariat.

But given the number of Chinese industrial activities springing up around the world, and many of them in places that are lawless (without the law) and unsettled (without people) how long is it likely to take until China's "_essential_" interests come into conflict with the interests of others with greater territoriality.

It is not only Hong Kong that started off as a barren trading post.  You could add Singapore, Calcutta, Capetown and York Factory to the list (not to mention Dublin - but that is another tangen as is the tale of all of those Dubliners down on Bondi Beach).


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## Edward Campbell (28 Jul 2012)

The fact, and it is a fact more often than not, that China does not interfere in the _intenal affairs_ of sovereign states does not mean that it is not actively engaged. In fact, see Dambisa Moyo's new book (again) in which she explains what she see's as China's resource/materials strategy and its impact on the rest of us. China is very active, indeed aggressive in the global resources and commodities markets - extracting, exploiting, buying, selling and stockpiling. It has as much if not more to do with _power_, Moyo suggests, than with resource needs.


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## a_majoor (30 Jul 2012)

China has indeed deployed forces to protect its assets abroad (security contractors in the Sudan), and also attempts to export its own workers to build projects in other nations (not high level workers, engineers and technical staff, actual grunt labourers), and has often built things to Chinese standards in these projects. Kirkhill can point to past behaviour as a possible guide to Chinese behaviour in Canada (Diane Francis wrote a piece in the FP a while ago on this very subject, which I think is posted in the Chinese Superthread)

For the most part, these events happen in Third World nations where the host nation has neither the means or resources to object. Canada is not a Third World nation, and although a very modest middle power, we do indeed have the means and resources to both object and correct behaviour we consider unacceptable. Commercial realities will also come into play. The Chinese are just as aware of the benefits of free trade as anyone else, and if they piss off enough potential customers and partners, they will find themselves isolated in the global marketplace. The internal fallout of that would bring down the Red Dynasty almost at once, so the use of market forces as a corrective is still our high card.


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## Edward Campbell (30 Jul 2012)

Moe on pipelines and the AB/BC spat in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/only-harper-can-end-pipeline-politicking/article4448146/


> Only Harper can end pipeline politicking
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




My guess is that John Ibbitson is right, _grosso modo_, but I think Prime Minister Harper will find a way to confound the pundits.

Enbridge, the first nations and the BC government must, indeed, come to the table, but: all at once? In my view Alberta and the rest of the provinces need not come because, in principle, AB is not involved - constitutionally Premier Redfod is on solid ground, all she needs to do is repeat her mantra, "If BC wants more money it must find a way to extract it from Enbridge," and go on about her other business. First nations can be bought off - that's the tradition, anyway. That leaves BC and Enbridge.

Premier Clark had a good an excellent case until she turned from reason to extortion. She, the BC government - no matter who leads it - has no power to stop the pipeline if the NEB and first nations agree it can go through ~ delay, yes; impede, yes; stop, no. But the feds can help BC by e.g. helping it, broadly - not necessarily through the BC government, with environmental protection costs. It can also help Enbridge (and other resource companies) through he tax system by making payments for environmental protection measures less costly in tax terms.

So, a series of 'conversations' involving the feds: Enbridge, first nations and the feds on access issues and costs; Enbridge, BC and the feds on environmental risk/cost matters; the feds, unilaterally, on tax changes; and, and, and ... but no first ministers' conference.


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## GAP (30 Jul 2012)

> but no first ministers' conference.



This whole spat is not/never has been about the pipeline....it's all about Clark winning in the upcoming election.....and she will step on a whole host of bodies, native or otherwise to get there.... :


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## Kirkhill (30 Jul 2012)

IF this thing is truly about finding a more acceptable balance between risk and benefit for all parties, and not (as GAP identifies) about BC showmanship in an election season then PM Harper is being dealt a fair hand.

As Ibbitson points out, most of Premier Clark's requirements are reasonable and in train.  They are a matter of time.

Premier Redford's position is clear, and reasonable.

Dollars have to be negotiated .... but dollars always have to be negotiated.

This decision is relatively straight forward - and the Health Care issue is indicative.

The PM doesn't do consensus politics in the usual fashion.  He doesn't try to force a consensus at a single time and place.  He allows a consensus to crystallize at its own natural rate.  

In the current situation he now has an effective consensus on a National Energy Plan (which blew the Liberals out of the water) one that even Premier Clark doesn't oppose as a concept.  She only opposes the timing and sequencing with respect to the Northern Gateway.

The PM can now go into a simpler One on One negotiation with Premier Clark, with an understanding of what he wants and what the rest of the premiers are willing to accept, including Premier Redford, and discuss the tariff that BC is going to be allowed to charge the Federal Government to permit inter-provincial trade.   All the discussion of risk will fall away if the benefit is seen to be acceptable.

As long as he doesn't presume to impose tariffs on Alberta, or attempt to tell Alberta to increase its royalties, or spend more of them on BC then he should keep Alberta on side.

According to the Alberta Government and CERI he has 187 BCAD of Federal Revenue on the table, over the next 25 years, to play with.

http://oilsands.alberta.ca/economicinvestment.html

A deal is eminently doable IMHO.

He gets to look like Solomon if he can pull it off.   Inter-provincial trade disputes are entirely within the 1867 remit of the Federal Government, especially those that are in the national interest.  And, for good measure, he may end up delivering on an acceptable NEP and scuttling Trudeau and the Liberals forever.


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## Kirkhill (30 Jul 2012)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> China has indeed deployed forces to protect its assets abroad (security contractors in the Sudan), and also attempts to export its own workers to build projects in other nations (not high level workers, engineers and technical staff, actual grunt labourers), and has often built things to Chinese standards in these projects. Kirkhill can point to past behaviour as a possible guide to Chinese behaviour in Canada (Diane Francis wrote a piece in the FP a while ago on this very subject, which I think is posted in the Chinese Superthread)
> 
> For the most part, these events happen in Third World nations where the host nation has neither the means or resources to object. Canada is not a Third World nation, and although a very modest middle power, we do indeed have the means and resources to both object and correct behaviour we consider unacceptable. Commercial realities will also come into play. The Chinese are just as aware of the benefits of free trade as anyone else, and if they piss off enough potential customers and partners, they will find themselves isolated in the global marketplace. The internal fallout of that would bring down the Red Dynasty almost at once, so the use of market forces as a corrective is still our high card.



Thanks for doing some of my leg work Thuc.

We have been focussing on CNOOC and China in this conversation but in truth I would have the same reservation about any national investors backed by the state - Chinese, Russian, Arab or even (and perhaps especially) Brits and Americans.  If Washington started investing Federal Dollars directly in Canadian Oilsands and Pipelines I would become very worried indeed.


----------



## Brad Sallows (31 Jul 2012)

Pipeline objectors are using the word "never" entirely too much.  Getting BC and the native bands onside is just a question of money.  Once that is settled, the greeners will be ignored.


----------



## a_majoor (31 Jul 2012)

Milton Friedman's contributions to Canadian economic policy and evolution. A suitable way to celebrate Dr Friedman's life on the 100th anniversery of his birth!

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/07/31/michael-walker-on-milton-friedman-everything-we-know-about-monetary-policy/



> *Michael Walker on Milton Friedman: All we know about monetary policy*
> Michael Walker, National Post  Jul 31, 2012 – 6:10 AM ET | Last Updated: Jul 31, 2012 4:59 PM ET
> 
> REUTERS/University of Chicago
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (1 Aug 2012)

The equalization formula was never designed for a contingency like Ontario's fiscal mismanagment, and now the stresses may pull the entire program down. Considering that it may be possible (using current trends) for Ontario to have a $30 billion/year deficit and $400 billion dollar debt by the time the next election period rolls around, this is of more than academic interest:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/08/01/matt-gurney-ontario-goes-and-ruins-the-confederation-party-for-everyone/#more-86546



> *Matt Gurney: Ontario goes and ruins the Confederation party for everyone*
> Matt Gurney  Aug 1, 2012 – 10:41 AM ET | Last Updated: Aug 1, 2012 10:53 AM ET
> 
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (1 Aug 2012)

I wish someone on the _National Post_ editorial staff proofread Mat Gurney's stuff:



> Matt Gurney: Ontario goes and ruins the Confederation party for everyone
> Matt Gurney  Aug 1, 2012 – 10:41 AM ET | Last Updated: Aug 1, 2012 10:53 AM ET
> 
> 
> ...




I have yet to read the Dodge article -I will later this week, but I agree, broadly, with what he is reported to have written.


----------



## Edward Campbell (1 Aug 2012)

Here is the article by David Dodge, Peter Burn and Richard Dion; there is not much with which one might argue. It makes good economic and public policy sense. The conclusion is important and prescriptive: _"the “solution” lies elsewhere: we need to focus less on the equality (or comparability) and more on the quality (or adequacy) of public services; less on federal transfers that redistribute income to “equalize” fiscal capacity, more on federal investments that will create more income and build the fiscal capacity of today’s lower-income provinces. We need policies that promote positive provincial convergence and the development of competitive manufacturing and service industries, and that also reflect the practical reality that Canada’s economic prosperity and political equilibrium ultimately depend on the economic strength of all provinces, especially populous Ontario ... In short, we need to think and look outside the equalization and transfers box, outside the narrow confines of subsection 36 (2) of the Constitution Act, 1982, and look to the broader economic objectives of subsection 36 (1)."_

From The Consitution Act (1982):



> PART III
> 
> EQUALIZATION AND REGIONAL DISPARITIES​
> 36. (1) Without altering the legislative authority of Parliament or of the provincial legislatures, or the rights of any of them with respect to the exercise of their legislative authority, Parliament and the legislatures, together with the government of Canada and the provincial governments, are committed to
> ...



Dodge _et al_ say more "promoting," "furthering" and "providing essential public services of *reasonable* quality" and less "making equalization payments."

I agree.


----------



## Edward Campbell (4 Aug 2012)

More on pipelines:

1. Enbridge and _Northern Gateway_ may face more competition, according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisons of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/trans-mountain-the-other-pacific-pipeline/article4462228/


> Trans Mountain: The other Pacific pipeline
> 
> NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE
> VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
> ...



2. The second story, being reported on CBC Radio news and on _The House__ is this report:

http://www.cbc.ca/thehouse/news-promo/2012/08/04/northwest-territories-offers-alternative-to-northern-gateway-pipeline/



Northwest Territories offers alternative to Northern Gateway project

Saturday, August 4, 2012


The conflict between Alberta and British Columbia over the Northern Gateway pipeline seems to have put another hurdle in the way of the controversial project. 

Now, the Northwest Territories says Alberta should be looking North, not West, to export its oil overseas. This week on The House, guest-host Louise Elliott ask the Premier of the Northwest Territories, Bob McLeod, why he wants to help Alberta ship its oil overseas. We also hear what the Alberta government makes of the idea with International and Intergovernmental Relations Minister Cal Dallas.
		
Click to expand...



So, Christie Cark is facing even more problems.

We all know that pipelines in BC are a contentious issues: one that transcends partisan politics; put simple, for many British Columbians the risks (mainly to the environment) outweigh the potential benefits to BC and Canada, as a whole.

The Northwest Territories/Beaufort Sea option is also fraught with problems - not the least being that, despite "global warming," it is not a year round solution.


_


----------



## Kirkhill (4 Aug 2012)

"over, under, around or through": oil, like water, will flow where it can.

Christie's constituents may see BC as the environmental plug that will prevent a global warming disaster but:

Around 

to the south the Americans will cheerfully ship more Canadian oil out of Californian port;
to the North the Alaskans (some of whom are Americans  ;D)  are just as eager to develop infrastructure to connect them to the lower 48 via Canada - a combined road, rail, pipeline right of way would sell very quickly;
also to the North our own locals have discovered the merits of developing infrastructure and if a pipeline (reversible) gets a highway finished to the North Coast, along with a deepwater port then so much the better;
other "arounds" are Churchill and Thunder Bay, not to mention Halifax and the US Gulf Coast.

Through

Kinder-Morgan.

So, it becomes a case of "get on board and get your bit" or "get left behind"  and in the process cause the rest of the country to question BC's commitment to Confederation.  What is the point of a partner that will not co-operate in the interest of the national good?


----------



## GAP (4 Aug 2012)

Just ship it East....land is flatter, twin with existing pipelines, etc.....


----------



## Kirkhill (4 Aug 2012)

Widen the St-Lawrence Seaway and commit to keeping it as a year round transit route?  Ice-strengthened double-hull tankers?


----------



## Edward Campbell (4 Aug 2012)

GAP said:
			
		

> Just ship it East....land is flatter, twin with existing pipelines, etc.....








Pipelines in Canada, Alaska and the Northern tier United States


----------



## Kirkhill (4 Aug 2012)

Further to the subject of Around - Bloomberg 2007



> Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska (Update4)
> 
> By Yuriy Humber and Bradley Cook - April 18, 2007 16:38 EDT
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (15 Aug 2012)

I have been ranting about this in the Why is Europe ungovernable? thread but here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisons of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ is more, in an especially Canadian context:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/why-a-pq-win-could-give-new-powers-to-the-rest-of-canada/article4481976/


> Why a PQ win could give new powers to the rest of Canada
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




I think Ibbittson is on the right track but I suspect that Prime Minister Harper is more _inclined_ towards decentralization than Ibbittson thinks. My guess is that Stephen Harper wants to decentralize in order to accomplish Constitutional 'correctness' and administrative (and, consequentially financial) clarity - the way to do that is through decentralization, beginning with a federal withdrawal from the many and sundry areas of provincial jurisdiction into which it has intruded over the past century.


----------



## Kirkhill (15 Aug 2012)

I agree with you ERC.

My sense of Stephen Harper's modus operandi is that he is not inclined to use blunt force, in fact he may not be inclined to use any force at all, to achieve his objectives.  Instead he just waits and watches for cracks and fissures to open due the natural progression of forces and then gently inserts a shim when it suits him to prevent the crack from closing and healing.  Eventually a permanent divergence of the type he desires is achieved.


----------



## Edward Campbell (23 Aug 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> There is one thing about which the _Good Grey Globe's_ national affairs columnist Jeffrey Simpson and I agree: Canada has a _productivity_ problem. He outlines part of it in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/exploiting-canadas-resources-can-be-a-fools-game/article2345076/
> 
> ...




I know everyone gets bored to tears when I mention *productivity* but it does matter. Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is report that quotes Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney on how and why corporate Canada is screwing us, in productivity terms:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/free-up-dead-money-carney-exhorts-corporate-canada/article4493091/


> Free up 'dead money,' Carney exhorts corporate Canada
> 
> KEVIN CARMICHAEL, RICHARD BLACKWELL AND GREG KEENAN
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




Mr. Carney's remarks were, also, a thinly veiled "shot across the bows" for Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty. One of the roots of our productivity malaise was John Diefenbaker's decision, in 1962, to devalue our dollar to, in his words, create "a tremendous upsurge'' in exports (to the USA). It didn't really work - not as well as a more productive industrial sector would have, over the long term - but it _pacified_ his critics and, despite Liberal opposition to it, became national 'policy' for about 40 years.


----------



## Kirkhill (23 Aug 2012)

526 BCAD does sound like a lot, but when Suncor or Teck are involved in projects and acquisitions valued in the BCAD range a 5 BCAD float doesn't sound excessive, IMO.  4 projects of 5 BCAD (an oilsands plant, a new field, a couple of pipelines) going over budget by 25% would eat that up, or a single acquisition coupled with a radical fall in oil prices from Brent prices ($116) to West Texas ($97) could blow it away in a flash.

Mark Carney has made his name by boldly supporting conservative policies.  To be sure that required him to take gambles and he is to be commended for that.

However it appears to me that he is encouraging others to take gambles of a different type than he would be willing to undertake in their shoes.

None of which serves to undermine the underlying argument that productivity does need to be enhanced and there is money available to allow companies to chip away at that over time by continuous improvement of their plants and processes.  But that doesn't require A Great Leap Forward.  It requires a slow, pawky, Long March.


----------



## Brad Sallows (23 Aug 2012)

If companies are hoarding cash reserves as a contingency against political developments over the next few months, particularly Nov-Jan to see what the US does with its fiscal situation, then taken together these two messages from the bureaucratic suits do not make sense:
1) Spend your money.
2) If the US fiscal cliff and Euro problems aren't properly solved, watch out!


----------



## Edward Campbell (23 Aug 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I know everyone gets bored to tears when I mention *productivity* but it does matter. Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is report that quotes Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney on how and why corporate Canada is screwing us, in productivity terms:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/free-up-dead-money-carney-exhorts-corporate-canada/article4493091/
> 
> ...




Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is a report of corporate Canada's response to Governor Carney:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/companies-hit-back-at-carney/article4496255/


> Companies hit back at Carney
> 
> CARRIE TAIT, IAIN MARLOW
> CALGARY, TORONTO — The Globe and Mail
> ...




As corporate Canada and Kirkhill point out, there are valid reasons for corporate caution, but Carney is right, too: it is "dead money" and some of it can, surely, be invested now in ways (new tooling, for example) that will improve productivity - in fact a high dollar makes it more attractive to buy e.g. productivity enhancing technology from foreign sources.


----------



## a_majoor (25 Aug 2012)

While the numbers seem quite dramatic, Mark Carney failed to put things into perspective. The seemingly vast horde of cash is only a small part of the overall economic picture, as reported here:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/08/24/peter-foster-carneys-%C2%ADcorporate-cash-kerfuffle/



> *Peter Foster: Carney’s ­corporate cash kerfuffle*
> 
> Peter Foster | Aug 24, 2012 10:40 PM ET
> More from Peter Foster
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (16 Sep 2012)

Wonderful essay on the "Invisible Hand" of the market:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/09/14/peter-foster-biting-the-invisible-hand/



> *Peter Foster: Biting the Invisible Hand*
> 
> Peter Foster | Sep 14, 2012 8:47 PM ET | Last Updated: Sep 14, 2012 9:07 PM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (21 Sep 2012)

And how Canadians try to evade the heavy hand of government regulation, in this case by cross border shopping for eggs. (There has been a similar discussion in the NP about milk quotas and the perverse costs and incentives they cause, perhaps the best example in the milk quota story was the fact that milk producers cannot sell their milk to a new company trying to establish a yoghurt factory in Canada, but were forced to sell the milk for a lower cost for use as animal feed; the system screws the yoghurt producer, consumers who would like to buy a different product and the farmers it allegedly protects).

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/09/21/jesse-kline-whats-wrong-with-canadians-crossing-the-border-for-cheaper-groceries/



> *Jesse Kline: What’s wrong with Canadians crossing the border for cheaper groceries?*
> 
> Jesse Kline | Sep 21, 2012 1:03 PM ET
> More from Jesse Kline | @accessd
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (22 Sep 2012)

ERC is right about there needing to be a "centrist" opposition party in the wings when the current government becomes tired and out of ideas and energy. The NDP isn't showing any real signs of moving towards the center, as their economic illiteracy continued to amaze:

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/09/flights-of-fancy-lefts-approach-to.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ABearsRant+%28A+Bear%27s+Rant%29



> *Flights Of Fantasy - The Left's Approach To The Economy*
> 
> If you're planning to read this post, you probably should get a coffee because it's a long one.
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (25 Sep 2012)

And more on how the dysfunctional marketing board quota system distorts the market. Making $1000 for driving cases of cheese across the border? It is surprising that we don't here much more of this, but smugglers are hardly going to brag about it and I doubt people wo are saving large amounts of money will cpmplin much either:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/09/24/peter-foster-the-war-on-cheese/



> *Peter Foster: The war on cheese*
> 
> Peter Foster | Sep 24, 2012 9:40 PM ET
> More from Peter Foster
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (27 Sep 2012)

Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, says that the federal government has its fiscal house in order but the provinces are not doing as well according to this article which is shared under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-doing-well-but-provinces-in-trouble-budget-watchdog-says/article4572217/


> Ottawa doing well, but provinces in trouble, budget watchdog says
> 
> JULIAN BELTRAME
> Ottawa — The Canadian Press
> ...




The problem is simple: we, Canadians, get too much "free" health care; more money must be found but we, Canadians, do not want higher taxes and governments appear unable to make the health care system much more efficient. So, somehow or other, some _outside_ money must come into the system. From where? The obvious answer is "business." Why should business put lots and lots and lots of money into health services? To make money. Premiers: are you reading this?


----------



## GAP (27 Sep 2012)

I disagree. 

This mantra of extending lives to the nth degree, treat everybody to the max is unsustainable....


----------



## Brad Sallows (27 Sep 2012)

Nothing is going to make much sense until the chief planning assumption - population growth which supports pyramid-shaped benefit schemes - is thrown away and replaced.


----------



## Edward Campbell (27 Sep 2012)

Speaking of Jim Prentice, he has some harsh words for the government and the oil industry according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/ottawa-failed-in-its-consultations-with-bc-first-nations-over-oil-pipelines-prentice/article4572255/


> Ottawa failed in its consultations with B.C. first nations over oil pipelines: Prentice
> 
> SHAWN MCCARTHY - GLOBAL ENERGY REPORTER
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




Sounds like a plan to me.


----------



## Edward Campbell (5 Oct 2012)

Two related items, both reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

*The case of the proposed CNOOC takeover of Nexen*

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/nexen-decision-a-tipping-point-for-canada/article4590269/


> Nexen decision a tipping point for Canada
> 
> DEREK H. BURNEY AND FEN OSLER HAMPSON
> Special to The Globe and Mail
> ...



AND​
*The Northern Gateway Pipeline Project*

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/you-heard-it-here-northern-gateways-dead/article4589760/


> You heard it here: Northern Gateway’s dead
> 
> JEFFREY SIMPSON
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




I agree, pretty much point by point, with Derek Burney and Fen Hampson: despite some serious problems the CNOOC takeover IS of _net benefit_ to Canada and should be approved, with conditions which will apply to future transactions, too.

I also agree, partially, with Simpson: _Northern Gateway_ is dead for, at the very least, a decade - more likely for a generation. But: we do need to get an efficient, effective, modestly cost effective, pipeline to a port which can serve Asia. A pipeline through BC, maybe a massive expansion of the southern pipeline, the _Trans Mountain/Kinder Korgan_ proposal, is needed and is a better choice than shipping through Eastern Canada.


----------



## a_majoor (6 Oct 2012)

> What’s not standing in the way are U.S. environmentalists, whom the Harper government accused of being the principal reasons for the project’s problems. This wild statement was, then as now, completely at variance with reality, since British Columbians are hardly to be led around by their collective nose by a handful of folks from south of the border. To suggest otherwise is to insult their intelligence.



So the millions that US groupd like the Tides Foundation sluice into the Canadian environmental movement is a wild statement? He obviously has never heard of ace researcher Vivian Krause.


----------



## Retired AF Guy (6 Oct 2012)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> So the millions that US groupd like the Tides Foundation sluice into the Canadian environmental movement is a wild statement? He obviously has never heard of ace researcher Vivian Krause.



I suspect that people like Jeffery Simpson consider Ms. Krause as just a crank... that's if they even know she exists.


----------



## a_majoor (6 Oct 2012)

Retired AF Guy said:
			
		

> I suspect that people like Jeffery Simpson consider Ms. Krause as just a crank... that's if they even know she exists.



Her work has been heavily featured on the National Post (see the sidebar on their website), so I'm sure he does know her. Sadly, many people take the same approach to research and inconvenient facts; they ignore it or if it is directly brought up; they will turn to _ad hominem_ attacks or change the subject (or both). Luckily, we are living in an age where "narratives" crafted by media and others are being challenged by the ability of outsiders to present the facts without going through media gatekeepers.


----------



## Edward Campbell (9 Oct 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> ...
> The TPP is, broadly, a good thing, with or without China, Japan and South Korea; an ASEAN-China deal is a good thing, too; TPP + ASEAN-China + China, Japan and South Korea is an even better thing, but don't hold your breath while waiting for any of them.




We are "in," according to the _Globe and Mail_ in a report headlined, *Canada officially joins Pacific trade talks*.

The report says that _"Canada will join the other 10 members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks at the negotiating table for the next full round December 3-12 in Auckland, New Zealand,"_ and _"Countries participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks include the United States, Australia, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and Brunei. With the inclusion of Mexico, which has also just officially joined, the nations involved in negotiations comprise 658 million people and their combined annual economic output exceeds $20.5-trillion."_

This will be very, very controversial because several countries, led by the Australia, New Zealand and the USA, will take aim at our egg and dairy _supply management_ (protection) system.


----------



## GAP (9 Oct 2012)

Our our egg and dairy supply management should have been phased out ages ago.....


----------



## Edward Campbell (9 Oct 2012)

GAP said:
			
		

> Our our egg and dairy supply management should have been phased out ages ago.....




Agreed, but the _counter_ 'argument' from egg and dairy producers will be loud, _colourful_ and, probably, violent.


----------



## Rifleman62 (10 Oct 2012)

Violent? Break the law, get arrested, go to trial, then reap what you have sown.

Ten thousand of the richest dairy farmers in the world are making Canada's less well off, the Indians and the disadvantaged pay three times the price for milk. Surely the NDP could support the end of supply management in Canada?

The end is also environmentally friendly for many in Canada. It reduces automobile engine exhaust contaminates escaping into the atmosphere waiting to get out and into Canada with cheap dairy, eggs, chicken, turkey, pork etc.


----------



## genesis98 (10 Oct 2012)

6 years ago I was able to make 26 grand in one year as a corporal in the sig reserve.


----------



## Kirkhill (10 Oct 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Two related items, both reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> *The case of the proposed CNOOC takeover of Nexen*
> 
> ...



Perhaps the time is ripe to go right flanking and tie Fort McMurray, Inuvik, Prudhoe and Valdez together.  It would mean mixing pipelines, directions and fluids (bitumen, distillate and gas) and it would exporting Canadian oil and gas via American ports (which we are already doing).  But the scope of the project would be so massive and of such duration that it would create a focus for activity that would create transportation corridors for road and rail.  That is a strategic outcome appreciated by both the Alaskan and the Canadian governments.

And it would have the support of the majority of the Alaskans and the northern tribes along the MacKenzie.

It might even be privately financed.


----------



## Edward Campbell (10 Oct 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> We are "in," according to the _Globe and Mail_ in a report headlined, *Canada officially joins Pacific trade talks*.
> 
> The report says that _"Canada will join the other 10 members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks at the negotiating table for the next full round December 3-12 in Auckland, New Zealand,"_ and _"Countries participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks include the United States, Australia, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and Brunei. With the inclusion of Mexico, which has also just officially joined, the nations involved in negotiations comprise 658 million people and their combined annual economic output exceeds $20.5-trillion."_
> 
> This will be very, very controversial because several countries, led by the Australia, New Zealand and the USA, will take aim at our egg and dairy _supply management_ (protection) system.




More on the TPP, especially on the difficulties, in this report which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tpp-talks-are-canadas-best-ever-opportunity-for-trade-diversification/article4600407/


> TPP talks are Canada’s best ever opportunity for trade diversification
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




I hope that the Canadian negotiators are going to take a long view, which means e.g. _sacrificing_ "supply management" because it is bad public policy and bad economics, despite being good politics one guarantor of public peace in Ottawa. (Early this year CBC journalist stenographer Janyce McGregor took dictation from the dairy industry and published "five reasons to _save_ supply management"; the sixth reason, the one she failed to mention, but which the CBC editors posted in graphic form, is because the dairy farmers will commit acts of vandalism, even violence, including criminal assault on elected officials, as they did to Liberal Agricultural Minister Eugene Whalen in 1976.)






Former agriculture minister Eugene Whelan is hit on the head with a milk jug during a
demonstration by dairy farmers in this 1976 photo. Whelan said in his autobiography
that the federal government's refusal to bail out Quebec dairy farmers helped elect
the Parti Québécois later that year. (Russell Mant/Canadian Press)

I don't blame the (mainly Quebec) dairy farmers for being upset. They have a "sweetheart deal" which has 'saved' hundreds and hundreds of "family farms" and, indeed, a "way of life" which will disappear when, not if, supply management disappears. But we need not fear that failing to support pay blackmail to Quebec farmers is somehow important to national unity ~ dairy supports are the least of our worries on that front.


----------



## Kirkhill (11 Oct 2012)

Many of the dairy farmers are the same youngsters that were chucking milk at Eugene Whelan when I was in University.  Only they are not so young any more.  And they are not operating their family farms either.  Nor are their kids (remember the Quebec birth rate).

So where are they and what are they doing?

They are members of dairy co-operatives.  They manage their quota in their home province and that quota share gives them voting rights in their home co-ops.  

So far so traditional.

But the co-ops are no longer traditional.  They compete against Parmalat (Italian Multi-National) and Saputo (home grown Family held Multi-National).  Consequently they have bought operations outside the home province.  Within Canada that means that the co-op buys milk like any other business and sells its milk products.  The milk producers outside of the home province are not members of the co-op.  The only people eligible for membership on the board, and eligible to vote for the board, are home co-op members.  

Within Canada but outside the home province the co-ops operate exactly like their privately held competitors.  They are effectively limited partnerships and not co-ops.

The co-ops also operate outside Canada, buying up properties in the US in competition to Saputo and Parmalat as well as the major American players.
They are indistinguishable from privately held Multi-Nationals in the US.

Finally the co-ops are operating in places like Argentina and Brazil.  
They are indistinguishable from privately held Multin-Nationals in those countries.

And they compete from the safe haven of their protected status in Canada.

No more getting up at 04:00 to milk the cows.



There will be squawking but enough of them see the writing on the wall that they will adjust to making fortunes selling cheese to China in competition with the Kiwis and the Yanks.  

The co-op memberships have learned a lot in the last decade about the advantages of being a shareholder instead of a dairy farmer.


----------



## Edward Campbell (11 Oct 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Here is the article by David Dodge, Peter Burn and Richard Dion; there is not much with which one might argue. It makes good economic and public policy sense. The conclusion is important and prescriptive: _"the “solution” lies elsewhere: we need to focus less on the equality (or comparability) and more on the quality (or adequacy) of public services; less on federal transfers that redistribute income to “equalize” fiscal capacity, more on federal investments that will create more income and build the fiscal capacity of today’s lower-income provinces. We need policies that promote positive provincial convergence and the development of competitive manufacturing and service industries, and that also reflect the practical reality that Canada’s economic prosperity and political equilibrium ultimately depend on the economic strength of all provinces, especially populous Ontario ... In short, we need to think and look outside the equalization and transfers box, outside the narrow confines of subsection 36 (2) of the Constitution Act, 1982, and look to the broader economic objectives of subsection 36 (1)."_
> 
> From The Consitution Act (1982):
> 
> ...




There is a report in today's print edition of the _National Post_ that says that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has been given a classified (SECRET) report outlining some possible changes to equalization. One change that might have real fiscal and political ramifications is to recalculate how hydroelectricty production and the associated economic benefits are factored in; this would impact BC, MB, QC and NL.


----------



## Edward Campbell (11 Oct 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> There is a report in today's print edition of the _National Post_ that says that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has been given a classified (SECRET) report outlining some possible changes to equalization. One change that might have real fiscal and political ramifications is to recalculate how hydroelectricty production and the associated economic benefits are factored in; this would impact BC, MB, QC and NL.




Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Vancouver Sun_, is the report:

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Conservative+government+plans+equalization+overhaul/7373306/story.html


> Conservative government plans equalization overhaul
> *Changes could have multibillion-dollar consequences for some provinces*
> 
> By Jason Fekete, Postmedia News; With File From Jonathan Fowlie, Vancouver Sun
> ...




The simplest thing for provinces is to stop subsidizing hydro-electric power rates for consumers; it's also a simple way to guarantee electoral defeat. It may be simpler to accept less and blame the feds.


----------



## a_majoor (13 Oct 2012)

Demographics rears its head again. We will almost certainly need to make some drastic adjustments before they are made for us:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/10/12/jack-mintz-adapting-to-new-reality-of-longer-lives/



> *Jack Mintz: Adapting to new reality of longer lives*
> 
> Jack M. Mintz | Oct 12, 2012 8:44 PM ET
> More from Jack M. Mintz
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (14 Oct 2012)

Another area for deep reforms, both to save money and to provide real help to people in need. Private charity and faith based charities have a very positive track record:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/the-awful-truth-about-social-programs/article4610262/



> *The awful truth about social programs*
> MARGARET WENTE
> The Globe and Mail
> Published Saturday, Oct. 13 2012, 9:00 AM EDT
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (18 Oct 2012)

This, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ might seem counter-intuitive, but it is an interesting assessment:

My *emphasis* added. 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/some-canadian-provinces-lurching-toward-unsustainable-finances-study-warns/article4620163/


> Some Canadian provinces lurching toward ‘unsustainable finances,’ study warns
> 
> MICHAEL BABAD
> The Globe and Mail
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (18 Oct 2012)

Lurching? Unsustainable?

How about moving at warp speed in Ontario's case, which Quebec drafting close behind.

Reason?



> (1) investors expect the federal government to rescue provinces down the road, or (2) they have confidence that provinces will take corrective action, or (3) they have not fully evaluated the long-term credit picture.”


----------



## foresterab (18 Oct 2012)

While an interesting report I question some of the assumptions in the report such as:
1) expenditures are based upon spending up to a maximum of 145% of revenue in a year
2) no provision for economic tax expansion.  Alberta has no sales tax currently and low overall tax rates (hence high default rating score) but how much can Quebec expand taxes?
3) Does not speak to expenditures as a percentage of federal equalization?
4) Has a large weighting for number of seniors in 30 years -> increased health care costs. But does not speak to working population available to pay taxes.
5) assumption of no change in productivity of working population

Best parts were the parts about future bond yields and discount differences between provinces based upon credit scores...that 0.5-0.75% difference has huge impacts on how areas will climb out of debt.  Also the acknowledgement of debt held by investments done by the provinces (page 11) showing an additional 18.9% liability not talked about in the provincial debt reports.

Worth a read but not enough here to formulate economic policy on.


----------



## Edward Campbell (19 Oct 2012)

The _Good Grey Globe's_[ Jeffrey Simpson is a recent convert on the Road to Damascus, but he has seen the light on health care budgeting and he gives a good thumbnail sketch of the problem in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/tight-money-kills-ontarios-buy-change-illusion/article4621935/


> Tight money kills Ontario’s ‘buy change’ illusion
> 
> JEFFREY SIMPSON
> TORONTO — The Globe and Mail
> ...




I am not well enough read on health care to offer sensible solutions, but ...

1. The current 6 or 7 or even higher rates of growth are, *clearly unsustainable* over the mid to long term. We must either -
     
     a. Find "new" sources of money ~ bearing in mind that you and I are, always the only source of money for anything, or

     b. Reduce spending ~ on the services that you and I need use. If we, you and I, really need the service then we must pay directly ("new" money, in its own way), otherwise we must do without;

2. Tommy Douglas was right: a system that insures Canadians against *catastrophic* health care bills for *medically necessary* services is better, in all respects, than most other models, including, especially, the US model which is one of the few in the OECD that costs more than ours and is one of the few in the OECD which has worse outcomes than ours; 

3. Monique Begin was wrong: the system she introduced via the _Canada Health Act_ does not give us Tommy Douglas' model of health insurance, rather it appears to _promise_ "free" care for everyone for everything; and

4. The finite pool of money which you and I give to governments must be spent on many vital, core issues including e.g. the defence of the realm, public education and infrastructure. Health care spending is, indeed, "crowding out" those essential programmes. Thus go back to 1.a and 1.b

Almost every country in the OECD spends less, _per capita_, than Canada on health care and almost ever country in the OECD gets better results from its health care system. We must conclude that we have a poor  model. *But* our model is very close to being *the* defining issue for most Canadians; reform is, nearly, a practical political impossibility. We love our inefficient and ineffective system. I think the only thing we can conclude from that is that most Canadians are stupid willfully blind to economic realities.


----------



## ModlrMike (19 Oct 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> We love our inefficient and ineffective system. I think the only thing we can conclude from that is that most Canadians are stupid willfully blind to economic realities.




From the perspective of one who works at the heath care "coalface", I rather think you had it right the first time.

One of the other unintended consequences of "free" health care is that Canadians have abdicated any responsibility to look after themselves. The prevailing attitude is one of "my (hypertension/diabetes/obesity) is not my fault, but it's your job to make it go away". This philosophy is in large part responsible for a rapid drain of health care dollars. Preventable disease should not cost nearly as much as it does in this country. Add to the foregoing the inappropriate use of resources (if you come to ER with a cold it costs the system $1000, if you see your MD or walkin clinic $35), then it becomes easy to see where the money goes.


----------



## Brad Sallows (19 Oct 2012)

>They negotiated handsome settlements that grabbed a big chunk of the new money being injected into these public systems.

That should not come as a surprise to anyone who has lived long enough past the age of 15 to observe at least two rounds of public sector union negotiations.  The claim is _always_ that more money is need to "improve the X system".  The employees are _always_ first in line with their hands out when "more money" is announced.


----------



## Edward Campbell (20 Oct 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> There is a report in today's print edition of the _National Post_ that says that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has been given a classified (SECRET) report outlining some possible changes to equalization. One change that might have real fiscal and political ramifications is to recalculate how hydroelectricty production and the associated economic benefits are factored in; this would impact BC, MB, QC and NL.



The _Winnipeg Free Press_, quoting Jim Flaherty's office, says "the files referenced are not under active consideration by the government," which is a pity because the nature of "comparable" in revenues and services needs to be more clearly defined.


----------



## Fishbone Jones (20 Oct 2012)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> >They negotiated handsome settlements that grabbed a big chunk of the new money being injected into these public systems.
> 
> That should not come as a surprise to anyone who has lived long enough past the age of 15 to observe at least two rounds of public sector union negotiations.  The claim is _always_ that more money is need to "improve the X system".  The employees are _always_ first in line with their hands out when "more money" is announced.



Yup, I guess if you have a Public Service job, you're nothing but an ungrateful, money grabbing ne'er do well. Your only goal in life is how to fuck the taxpayer out of more of their cash.

However, the CAW doesn't have anything to do with that ridiculous price you pay for your car, or the IBEW when it comes to wiring a house, right?

I'd like to see how many naysayers would turn down a job in the Public Service if they wanted and were offered one. Very few I suspect. The majority would only be too glad to jump on that perceived 'gravy train'.

I suppose those that wouldn't also think PS don't pay taxes, get free cigarettes, etc, as once was thought of CF personnel. Speaking of which, I wonder what all those (Public Service) CF types would do for raises if their wage wasn't tied to those of others in PS unions?

But I suppose police, firefighters, ems and soldiers are ok, even though they are PS, they protect us right? The rest of the PS don't perform anything that you need, so they're just considered slugs that are a drain on society.

I guess if you are a Luddite libertarian you have the option of thinking like that.


----------



## Jed (20 Oct 2012)

recceguy said:
			
		

> Yup, I guess if you have a Public Service job, you're nothing but an ungrateful, money grabbing ne'er do well. Your only goal in life is how to fuck the taxpayer out of more of their cash.
> 
> However, the CAW doesn't have anything to do with that ridiculous price you pay for your car, or the IBEW when it comes to wiring a house, right?
> 
> ...



Wow! Pretty extreme characterization. IMO, Brad Sallows makes a valid point. Having spent most of my working career in PS or the military, and now sitting on the other side of the fence I agree with it to some extent.


----------



## Fishbone Jones (20 Oct 2012)

Jed said:
			
		

> Wow! Pretty extreme characterization. IMO, Brad Sallows makes a valid point. Having spent most of my working career in PS or the military, and now sitting on the other side of the fence I agree with it to some extent.



Really? What's extreme?

No more extreme than people that think the all PS are nothing more than a bunch of blood suckers.

And while they're swinging that big brush around, they must remember that all CF pers are PS also.

So please, come here and tell all the serving people on this site that they are not worth their pay.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse (20 Oct 2012)

Jed said:
			
		

> Wow! Pretty extreme characterization. IMO, Brad Sallows makes a valid point. Having spent most of my working career in PS or the military, and now sitting on the other side of the fence I agree with it to some extent.



Did you turn down or protest any raises while you were PS or military???  No??  Than your statement is futile.....

NEWSFLASH::  It's the Union's job to get more for thier members...full stop.

When you pay an investment person to help you invest do you tell him you'd like to make as little as possible or perhaps even lose some money??  Well, I pay my union to invest in my future.


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## Jed (20 Oct 2012)

Since when did I ever say that the PS or the CF were not worth their pay? Of course I never turned down any negotiated pay raise and I suffered the increment freezes as everyone did. There is no option given. 

I did however refuse to sign on to a Union when given the option in the PS (Sask circa 1985)  and I did receive less of a salary compared to my peers that did elect to sign with a Union as a consequence of my decision.

Unions are not all bad blood sucking organizations, currently however IMO, they are generally causing more economic harm than good as they are helping to perpetuate the culture of entitlement that seems to be so prevalent in today's society.


----------



## Jed (20 Oct 2012)

Further to my last; After many years of representing their members, it seems that Union management evolves into just another interim level of supervision between the management and workers. After a while, like all facets of human relations, the union management loses touch with their members and begins to make sure they (the Union Management) get their entitlements first.

Just like any democratically elected political party.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse (20 Oct 2012)

Jed said:
			
		

> Unions are not all bad blood sucking organizations, currently however IMO, they are generally causing more economic harm than good as they are helping to perpetuate the culture of entitlement that seems to be so prevalent in today's society.




Nice statement but please explain how?  I surely hope you aren't basing all that on a few sound bites from newscasts who need someone/anyone to give them something to,...well, whatever it is the media does these days.

I feel no more entitled now than when I non-union delivered drywall........


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse (20 Oct 2012)

Jed said:
			
		

> Further to my last; After many years of representing their members, it seems that Union management evolves into just another interim level of supervision between the management and workers. After a while, like all facets of human relations, the union management loses touch with their members and begins to make sure they (the Union Management) get their entitlements first.
> 
> Just like any democratically elected political party.



Now that I can buy,.......but just like politics it's because too many of us sit on the sidelines and whine and complain on websites all da.........err, wait a minute....


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## a_majoor (23 Oct 2012)

Eliminating debt should be job one, at all levels. The headline question "is it the governments fault?" is indirectly "yes", since they provided perverse incentives (even if these were perhaps indirect or created for a different purpose) that people responded to.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/10/23/marni-soupcoff-canadians-are-immersing-themselves-in-debt-is-it-governments-fault/



> *Marni Soupcoff: Canadians are immersing themselves in debt — Is it government’s fault?*
> 
> Marni Soupcoff | Oct 23, 2012 12:45 PM ET
> More from Marni Soupcoff | @soupcoff
> ...


----------



## captloadie (23 Oct 2012)

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> NEWSFLASH::  It's the Union's job to get more for their members...full stop.



Really, has that now become the sole role of a union. I always thought the union's job, originally, was to ensure that members were protected from overzealous management who put profits ahead of workplace safety and an employee's well being. And I applaud union execs who still work towards this goal. On the other hand, when union bosses would rather prove a point than ensure the well being of the membership, I have an issue. When the choice is to either give concessions or see an organization go bankrupt and the choice is allowing bankruptcy, how is that helping the membership. When the choice is fighting for higher wages for the PS, and the result being more layoffs and having to do more with less people, how is that helping? I'd give up my pay raise for the last three years if it meant I could have just one more admin clerk, truck driver, or mechanic.


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## Edward Campbell (23 Oct 2012)

Trade unions do a number of useful things - consider workplace health and safety, for one - but the most important thing they do is to help set the *cost* of labour. Knowing and accounting for all costs is vital to good management and labour costs are, usually, a major component of the final price of any product or service.

Please note that *cost ≠ value*. While the union helps to determine the *cost* of labour, through the collective bargaining process, the *value* of that labour is decided by the owners or managers of the enterprise. If or when the owner* is not satisfied that cost is _proportional to_ or _commensurate with_ value then (s)he must take measures to make them equal. It is possible, but rare, that the owner will see that the cost of labour is below its value and (s)he will, as a _defensive_ measure, raise salaries and benefits to keep the valuable work force at their jobs. But, most often, the owner and/or her/his managers  will see that the cost of labour is too high. (S)he may, as the NHL owners are doing in 2012, try to renegotiate salaries and benefits to get them down to a level (s)he considers commensurate with the value or (s)he may decide to change methods, perhaps through automation, to do the same work with less labour.

There is nothing wrong with unions; they are part of an economic _process_ but the process is very, very human and so, it is almost always imperfect, usually very imprefect.

With respect to the cost/value of labour: in most collective agreements we find three phases:

1. In the first phase the workers are paid too much, relative to the *value* of their labour;

2. In the second phase costs (wages and benefits) and value are pretty much proportionate; and

3. In the third phase the workers are underpaid relative to the value of their work.

In a good, balanced system the first and third phases should offset one another.


__________
* And you and I are the "owners" of public services; the Prime Minister or Premier are our "employees," we hire them to _manage_ the country for us.


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## Colin Parkinson (23 Oct 2012)

I would say that the vast majority of PS workers would be happy to hang onto what they have much less ask for more. They know neither the government nor the public have an interest in that at the moment. 

The problem  see with reductions in the PS is that the true bloodsuckers rarely suffer as they are connected and send their time being aware enough to avoid the axe, while people busy doing real work are to busy to protect themselves and then find themselves cut.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (23 Oct 2012)

captloadie said:
			
		

> Really, has that now become the sole role of a union. I always thought the union's job, originally, was to ensure that members were protected from overzealous management who put profits ahead of workplace safety and an employee's well being. And I applaud union execs who still work towards this goal. On the other hand, when union bosses would rather prove a point than ensure the well being of the membership, I have an issue. When the choice is to either give concessions or see an organization go bankrupt and the choice is allowing bankruptcy, how is that helping the membership. When the choice is fighting for higher wages for the PS, and the result being more layoffs and having to do more with less people, how is that helping? I'd give up my pay raise for the last three years if it meant I could have just one more admin clerk, truck driver, or mechanic.



When I said "more" I didn't say I meant money did I??....YOU made that leap........

Check my username on my profile and you might see that I have a job where "more" personal means a whole lot to me.


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## mariomike (24 Oct 2012)

captloadie said:
			
		

> On the other hand, when union bosses would rather prove a point than ensure the well being of the membership, I have an issue.



They were not our bosses. 

We could ( and did ) vote them back to Operations if they failed to represent to our satisfaction. 



			
				captloadie said:
			
		

> When the choice is fighting for higher wages for the PS, and the result being more layoffs and having to do more with less people, how is that helping?



Minimum staffing levels were/are written into our collective agreement. This protects not only the workers, but is also a matter of public safety.

As an Essential Service, we did not have - and did not seek - the right to strike. Wages and benefits went to binding interest arbitration.

The taxpayers' ability to pay the cost of labour is discussed here:
https://www.pao.ca/library/Ability%20to%20Pay%20Position%20Paper%202011.pdf


----------



## Edward Campbell (25 Oct 2012)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> Perhaps the time is ripe to go right flanking and tie Fort McMurray, Inuvik, Prudhoe and Valdez together.  It would mean mixing pipelines, directions and fluids (bitumen, distillate and gas) and it would exporting Canadian oil and gas via American ports (which we are already doing).  But the scope of the project would be so massive and of such duration that it would create a focus for activity that would create transportation corridors for road and rail.  That is a strategic outcome appreciated by both the Alaskan and the Canadian governments.
> 
> And it would have the support of the majority of the Alaskans and the northern tribes along the MacKenzie.
> 
> It might even be privately financed.




Or go the other way ...

While not referring to oil pipelines the idea is that the Atlantic coast does provide ready access to sea lanes to Asia so maybe, as some entrepreneurs have suggested, we should extend pipelines from AB to (an) Atlantic port(s).

Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/in-race-to-export-lng-a-new-atlantic-plan/article4634129/


> In race to export LNG, a new Atlantic plan
> 
> BERTRAND MAROTTE
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




A major Atlantic coast _Petro-port_, sending both oil and gas to the world, is an option.


----------



## Edward Campbell (25 Oct 2012)

The idea of *erasing* the federal debt always was, and still is, a pipe-dream; as in your personal finances, while it is nice to be debt free, debt, in and of itself, is not a problem so long as the debt to GDP ratio is  _acceptable_.

Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawas-long-term-debt-plans-shelved/article4649919/


> Ottawa’s long-term debt plans shelved
> 
> BILL CURRY
> OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
> ...




So, what is an _acceptable_ debt to GDP ratio? My suggestion is:

1. In "good" or "booming" times < 15:1,* when  money is pouring in the government should, simultaneously, pay down debt, restrain programme spending and cut taxes;

2. in "normal" times (moderate, steady growth) ≈ 25:1; and

3. In "had" time - a deep recession, a depression or a war >> 50:1 is wholly acceptable, not nice, cannot last, but acceptable.


__________
* Canada was in this position in the 1970s, when my political _bête noire_, Pierre Trudeau was in power. But we got there because of the combined effects of high growth that began in the late 1940s and fiscal policies from the 1950s. Trudeau presided over the _shift_ from St Laurent's eminently sensible policies and moved us to a position wherein, despite having neither a serous recession nor a war, we had  debt to GDP ratio, in 1995, of nearly 70:1!






Source: http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/03/21/graphic-50-years-of-canadian-debt/


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## Edward Campbell (25 Oct 2012)

I know some members work "at the coalface" of social services so I'm posting this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, as a prelude to a question:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/make-welfare-work-again/article4648077/


> Make welfare work again
> 
> MARGARET WENTE
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




My question is simple: *Is our system as bad as Ms Wente suggests?* (I suspect the answer is very complicated.)

My perception, based on almost no useful, first hand knowledge, is:

1. Ms Wente is right when she suggests that getting off welfare can be very hard for many people - not because they are lazy but because the system makes it difficult;

2. Many people receiving social assistance, of various sorts, cannot work - they are mentally ill and about 35 years ago we began to close all the _warehouses_ we had for them and put them out on the street. We told ourselves that they would benefit from "community care," and perhaps they would - but we never provided much community care because, unlike _warehousing_ mentally ill people, caring for them in the community is hideously expensive;

3. We have three and even four generations of welfare dependent people. The corollary is that much of our welfare problem is home grown, not caused by immigration; and

4. Welfare reform, useful welfare reform that might get people a real job, is unlikely to save any money.


----------



## GAP (25 Oct 2012)

find me a minimum wage job (that's where they are likely to have to start) that pays enough to provide housing, food, child care, eye & drug care, etc.....

Welfare has created it's own community and they discourage them from finding employment.... :


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## Edward Campbell (25 Oct 2012)

And here we are again with that most scintillating and stimulating of topics, Equalization!, in an exciting report which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/can-only-one-man-see-that-canadas-equalization-program-is-broken/article4650756/


> Can only one man see that Canada’s equalization program is broken?
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> Ottawa — The Globe and Mail
> ...




*David MacKinnon*, a native of Prince Edward Island, was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree (honours economics) from Dalhousie University and an MBA from York University. He was awarded a Centennial Fellowship by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and York University to study at York, Harvard and Oxford Universities as well as the European Institute of Business Studies. Mr. MacKinnon served as Director, Planning and Economics and Executive Director, Development Strategy in the Nova Scotia Department of Economic Development from 1976 to 1981. He later served in several senior capacities in the Ontario Public Service, the Bank of Montreal and as CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association from 1996 to 2003. Mr. MacKinnon is a Public Member of the Council of the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons and is the Chair of its Finance Committee and a member of its Executive, Complaints and Outreach committees. He serves on several Boards of Directors, including the West Park Health Centre. He recently finished my five year term on the Standards Council of Canada and was subsequently elected to the board of the Canadian Standards Association. He has advised the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and other Ontario organizations on fiscal federalism issues.
Biography provided by _The Frontier Centre for Public Policy_ (Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg)

In my opinion, Mr. MacKinnon is correct in his description of the problem and the solution to the problem is a thoroughgoing revision to what we understand equalization to be and how we calculate which provinces pay and receive and how much they pay and receive.


----------



## a_majoor (26 Oct 2012)

FP lays out the argument against allowig Chinese (or other nation's) SOE's to "invest" in Canada. It certainly is important to ensure that the SOE is made to comply with all Canadian rules and regulations, otherwise we wil end up in a situation similar to the ones outlined by Diane Francis in the FP, where the Chinese import their own workers, ignore or defy local laws and leave a huge and expensive mess behind. Indeed, some Chines companies in the mining industry are trying to slide something like that in here in Canada; advertising for jobs but stipulating that only speakers of Mandarin can apply. The positive side of allowing fresh investment capital into the Canadian economy should not be overlooked, no wonder the Government needs to move slowly and apply a "net benefit" test:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/10/25/terence-corcoran-fascism-by-another-name/



> *Terence Corcoran: Fascism by another name*
> 
> Terence Corcoran | Oct 25, 2012 9:10 PM ET | Last Updated: Oct 26, 2012 9:33 AM ET
> More from Terence Corcoran | @terencecorcoran
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (26 Oct 2012)

And while on a different topic than investment, as a resident of Ontario I am quite sensitive to the idea that our out of control spending and debt could drag down the rest of Canada:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/10/25/provincial-fiscal-follies/



> *Provincial fiscal follies*
> 
> Philip Cross, Special to Financial Post | Oct 25, 2012 8:59 PM ET | Last Updated: Oct 25, 2012 9:18 PM ET
> More from Special to Financial Post
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (29 Oct 2012)

I know this is dull as dishwater, but trust me, this is an important cog in the _productivity_ wheel:

Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-us-struggling-to-reach-agreement-to-agree-on-product-rules/article4715685/


> Canada, U.S. struggling to reach agreement to agree on product rules
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




The costs of these incompatible regulations to the whole continental economy are real, measurable, fairly large in many cases, and entirely avoidable but, as Ibbitson says,, _"Both governments have large bureaucracies and many agencies with turf to protect. States and provinces jealously guard their own powers. And private industry can be as obstructive in practice as it is supportive in principle."_ The costs, which come directly out of your wallet and mine, are the price we pay for *pig headed protectionism* on both sides of the border.


----------



## a_majoor (29 Oct 2012)

Perhaps closer to most of our experiences is air travel, and the incredible price we have to pay in Canada for the privilege of flying. For me, I have flown from Detroit Metro to US destinations for about 1/3 of the cost of a similar flight from Toronto. Since Toronto and Detroit are about the same distance from us by road, there is no real "downside" to using Detroit Metro for our flying needs:

http://business.financialpost.com/2012/10/27/why-canadian-airports-are-so-expensive-and-inefficient/?__lsa=877f46af



> *Why Canadian airports are so expensive and inefficient*
> 
> Scott Deveau | Oct 27, 2012 7:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Oct 29, 2012 3:23 PM ET
> More from Scott Deveau | @scottdeveau
> ...


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## dapaterson (29 Oct 2012)

Competing on subsidy is a race to the bottom.  And with the US soon being forced to dismantle its subsidy regime to cut their deficit, that problem will begin to fade.

Speeding transit through customs, whether for international connections or Canadian travellers, on the other hand, would be very welcome.


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## Edward Campbell (30 Oct 2012)

dapaterson said:
			
		

> Competing on subsidy is a race to the bottom.  And with the US soon being forced to dismantle its subsidy regime to cut their deficit, that problem will begin to fade.
> 
> Speeding transit through customs, whether for international connections or Canadian travellers, on the other hand, would be very welcome.




I agree with both points. Airports ought to be treated as a self sustaining _public utility_ rather than, as now, a 'cash cow' for Ottawa - that's basically the rents and fess argument. But it is good, speedy access to and services at airports (like quick customs and security screening and good baggage handing, not just shops and restaurants) that makes them attractive.


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## Edward Campbell (30 Oct 2012)

In this column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_, Andrew Coyne provides a warning for Canada:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/10/29/andrew-coyne/


> Like Europe, Canada is attempting to run a monetary union without a proper fiscal union
> 
> Andrew Coyne
> 
> ...




Can you imagine the Constitutional firestorm that any attempt by Ottawa to control the _fiscal union_ would ignite? On the other hand, how soon until some provinces come to Ottawa, cap-in-hand, demanding a bailout?


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## Edward Campbell (30 Oct 2012)

More on heavy oil development and pipelines, this time to Edmonton, in this article which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Toronto Sun_:

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/10/29/transcanada-partnering-with-chinese-firm-for-oilsands-pipeline


> TransCanada partnering with Chinese firm for oilsands pipeline
> 
> BY BILL KAUFMANN,
> CALGARY SUN
> ...




This would not be much of a story were it not for the furor that the proposed CNOOC/Nexen deal has created. The issue is Chinese not _foreign_ investment. Thanks to the "odd couple" joint efforts of e.g. right winger Diane Francis and loony leftie Maude Barlow, the Chinese have joined the Americans in Canada's little pantheon of bogeymen.


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## a_majoor (30 Oct 2012)

Privatizing CMHC should reduce the possibility of taxpayers getting dragged down by the housing market (even if you don't believe the market is overvalued now, sheer demographics means that more and more seniors will be leaving the market and selling their houses to fund their retirements, while fewer and fewer young people will be there to buy these houses. Supply>Demand=lower prices for houses).

The second point about CMHC being on the hook if interest rates rise is a dire prediction based on the irresponsible actions of the Ontario and Quebec governments over the years, loading up on debt and excessive spending. Ontario is already under a credit watch, and the Provincial debt is almost half the size of the Federal debt, so there is real danger here.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/10/30/jesse-kline-good-reasons-to-start-now-with-cmhc-privatization/



> *Jesse Kline: Good reasons to start now with CMHC privatization*
> 
> Jesse Kline | Oct 30, 2012 9:40 AM ET | Last Updated: Oct 30, 2012 9:41 AM ET
> More from Jesse Kline | @accessd
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (30 Oct 2012)

The _Globe and Mail_ is reporting that the *Eastern oil pipeline feasible, TransCanada says*. The article says that TransCanada chief executive officer Russ Girling said that a $5-billion project to carry Alberta oil to eastern Canada is both technically and economically feasible. The article reports that the preliminary $5-billion estimate would involve building some 375 kilometres of new pipe, and connecting it with 3,000 kilometres of existing gas pipe, to carry oil from the oil hub at Hardisty, Alta., to Montreal. A further 220 kilometres of new pipe, at a cost of several hundred million dollars, would be required to bring oil to Quebec City.


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## foresterab (30 Oct 2012)

The hub at Hardisty though is a mix of light and  heavy oil....only one of which can currrently be used in Eastern Canada and both of which are in demand in the US via the existing infrastructure.   This also follows on the 3 billion dollar announcement of TransCanada to built a new line to Fort McMurray in partnership with a Chinese firm to increase flow of heavy oil.

Given that heavy oil still trades at a significant discount the issue might be more complex if upgrader facilities are needed to produce a crude oil usable in Eastern Canada....

And all this assumes that all provinces in between are in agreement of the change and no impact will occur.


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## Edward Campbell (31 Oct 2012)

And the _Globe and Mail_ reports, with a headline suggesting that the CPC broke an election promise, that _*"New year-end numbers reveal the federal government quietly cut spending by $8-billion after Canadians handed the Conservatives a majority mandate ...*_ [and]_* ... the government’s critics say the latest figures are another example of Parliament being kept in the dark when it comes to Conservative spending cuts."*_

Good on the government; the _Good Grey Globe's_ reportorial biases are showing again.


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## Edward Campbell (31 Oct 2012)

Remember when the government did not allow a takeover of Potash Corp by Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton? Now, according to _Reuters Canada_, Potash Corp is in merger talks with its smaller rival Israel Chemicals (ICL). It looks like the Israeli Government will now have to decide if that deal passes its 'net benefits' test.


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## Edward Campbell (31 Oct 2012)

Conservative MP Chris Alexander posted a self serving paean to Tory fiscal management which I will not repeat, but this excerpt from it is both true and a useful reminder that Canada (despite its governments?) is doing some things right:

+ Canada, since July 2009, has seen over 820,000 net new jobs created – the best job growth record in the entire G-7.
+ The World Economic Forum says our banks are the soundest in the world.
+ Forbes magazine ranked Canada as the best country in the world to do business.
+ The OECD and the IMF predict our economic growth will be among the strongest in the industrialized world over the next two years.
+ Our net debt-to-GDP ratio remains the lowest in the G-7, by far.
+ All three of the major credit rating agencies – Moody’s, Fitch and Standard and Poor’s – have reaffirmed Canada’s top credit rating.
   _Little wonder more and more international leaders are pointing to Canada and our economic leadership as a model to follow:_
+ IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde: “Canada, a country with one of the strongest financial sectors in the world … Canada can teach the rest of the world about how to build a stronger, safer financial system …
   If I look at Canada and the anomaly that it constitutes compared to other countries – because it’s growing pretty well, because its banking system is solid and growing, because its inflation is under control,
   because its fiscal deficit is also pretty much under control and its level of indebtedness is reasonable – you know, it’s not bad as a scorecard.”
+ OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria: “(Canada is) well prepared. You have been better prepared and therefore you’ve weathered the storm a lot better. You are well prepared now. Your fiscal policy,
   your monetary policy, your financial system (is) in better shape. And therefore, you are doing better in … the world economy.”


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## Edward Campbell (31 Oct 2012)

But, on the downside, this just came in from the _Dow Jones Newswires_ via J.P. Morgan/ADR:

Reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _adr.com_
https://www.adr.com/Markets/GlobalNewsStory?docID=1-DN20121031011798-7UJ95AHTQGMONK4TU88RFO2US1


> UPDATE: Canada GDP Declines Unexpectedly in August
> 
> 10:27 AM ET on Wednesday, October 31, 2012
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (14 Nov 2012)

An interesting idea to mobilize social capital (rather than bureaucrats) in dealing with social problems:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/11/13/john-ivison-conservatives-look-to-tackle-social-services-with-free-market-ingenuity/



> *John Ivison: Conservatives look to tackle social services with free market ingenuity*
> John Ivison | Nov 13, 2012 11:26 PM ET
> More from John Ivison
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (14 Nov 2012)

David Akin, one of he few journalists I singled out as being an exception to the _unprofessional_ rule, provides a very useful column on an important, albeit dull as dishwater, topic ~ the national debt. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from his _blog_ on _canoe.ca_:

http://blogs.canoe.ca/davidakin/politics/where-is-the-line-between-good-debt-and-bad-debt/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter


> Where is the line between good debt and bad debt?
> 
> David Akin
> 
> ...




I am equally unsure of how much debt is enough ~ but I heard/read the same thing as Akin did and I, too, believe that some national debt is OK, if not downright desirable ~ but I'm guessing that it is somewhere between 20% and 30% of GDP: large enough to keep some _credit_ available but small enough to not be a significant burden. In a perfect world much of that national debt, say ⅔ of it, would be held by Canadians as domestic debt so that they, Canadian holding Canadian bonds, receive most of what we pay as interest on the debt.


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## a_majoor (18 Nov 2012)

Canadian pundits Anna Maria Tremonti, and Margaret Wente dramatically lower the bar on economics with their endorsements and commentary on the book "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else". If this is the level of economic education and discourse across a large part of our population, itr is no wonder we are having such a hard time pulling ourselves out of the economic crisis, or are still dealing with multi billion dollar debts, deficits, unfunded liabilities and personal debt.

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/15/peter-foster-the-fair-sex-goes-for-the-capitalist-jugular/



> *Peter Foster: The ‘fair’ sex goes for the capitalist jugular*
> Peter Foster | Nov 15, 2012 10:31 PM ET
> 
> Media sisterhood keeps class-warfare debate alive
> ...


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## Brad Sallows (19 Nov 2012)

Debt is "too high" when it there is not enough room/time to manoeuvre out of an unfavourable fiscal death spiral (any sufficiently long period of deficit spending from which it becomes impossible to escape if the costs of servicing debt become uncontrollable).  A number of European countries, and the US, are most likely in this situation, and consequently well-ducked when costs of servicing debt tick up.  Those optimists who insist it can't happen seem immune to all past lessons of how suddenly things can move from "trend looks OK" to "all is lost".

Government-issued debt just soaks up capital and militates against capital being more usefully employed.  Governments need to set rules for markets, but stay out of markets.

We are in crisis because people essentially want to deleverage, but governments insist on spending on people's behalf because people are not spending enough (having spent it already) to support revenues at the levels during the period of "spent it already".

If governments insist on paying service unions progressively more money for an essentially unchanging amount of work (ie. no productivity gain) and allowing more funds to be soaked up by increasing burdens of regulation and regulated processes, the outcome is predictable: spending which would expand economic activity is squeezed out.  We have been doing that for well over 40 years.  Eventually the football is just going to be too heavy to punt again.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (20 Nov 2012)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> service unions



service unions *skip*service unions *skip*service unions *skip*service unions *skip*service unions *skip*service unions *skip*service unions *skip*

I don't suppose you know any other records??


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## Brad Sallows (20 Nov 2012)

Where do you think the "new" money mostly goes?


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## Bruce Monkhouse (20 Nov 2012)

To folks who get hired to do a job the Govt. asks them to do??.........just throwin' it out there.


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## Edward Campbell (20 Nov 2012)

I am sick and tired of the sterile public sector union debate.

The main purpose of collective bargaining - and it's a *good* purpose I hasten to add - is that it sets the cost of labour in the marketplace and management cannot manage efficiently and effectively unless it understands all the inputs (costs) and outputs (profits). The _industrial_ model of collective bargaining works quite well in most _industrial_ sectors and well enough in all of them. But the public sector is not like an industrial enterprise, one does not, because, very often, one cannot measure productivity in any meaningful way. If I'm making automobiles and my labour costs rise too much I can replace many (relatively) low paid production line workers with a combination of robots and a few highly paid engineers and technicians - I can, within the constraints of free and fair collective bargaining, keep my costs in an acceptable range in proportion to my income and profits. I, as the proprietor, know how to cut labour costs and so does the trade union so we reach a reasonable accommodation on my total cost of labour and I (proprietor) actually have an interests in keeping more people employed because unemployed people are unlikely to buy my products. The same rules don't apply in many (most?) parts of the public sector: I cannot, for example, for a whole host of reasons, consider replacing corrections officers, just for example, with robots; they, the corrections officers, do not fit in the _industrial_ collective bargaining model.

Back in the early 1960s when we, in the US led West, jumped into collective bargaining for the public sector we picked the wrong model. We, everyone, taxpayers, workers, managers - the big *WE* - need an efficient and effective public sector, we don't want to and shouldn't have to pay for unproductive people doing unnecessary jobs. Brad and Bruce ought to be able to agree on that fundamental point. I am convinced that the current, _industrial_ model of labour relations makes that harder to achieve. I'm not sure I could design a really good model - out of my league, I'm afraid - but I am pretty sure that I could do better than just keeping the one we have.


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## mariomike (20 Nov 2012)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> If governments insist on paying service unions progressively more money for an essentially unchanging amount of work (ie. no productivity gain) <snip>



The City of Toronto "cut the gravy" to at least one of their service unions.

Report from the Chief to the City of Toronto, Sept. 2012:
http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2012/cd/bgrd/backgroundfile-49838.pdf

"( Toronto ) EMS' emergency patient volumes continue to grow, with a 4.3% increase in 2012 over the same period in 2011. Over the past ten years, emergency patient transport volumes have increased by 29.3%, from 141,175 in 2002 to 182,538 in 2011, reflecting growth in the city's population and increases in the number of residents over age 55. However during these ten years, there has been no increase in the paramedic workforce."

"These increases have progressively eroded EMS response times year over year as the number of available ambulances at any one time is diminished by the increased patient volume."


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## Brad Sallows (20 Nov 2012)

I'm not sure what amount is equal to "gravy".

The value of a dollar is approximately 1/6th what it was in 1970 (ie. $600 today buys what $100 bought in 1970).  So for any given level of training and experience, today's salary should be - roughly - 6 times what it was in 1970.

Public spending has to increase each year for three reasons: population growth (more services needed), inflation, and new legislation and regulations (rarely are any taken away).  If public revenue does not increase commensurately, public services are squeezed.  If compensation costs grow above the rate necessary for inflation and the increased head count (more services), public services are squeezed.

As long as the requisite basic services I expect from government are provided and taxes remain where they are, I don't care about the results of the fight between unions and anti-poverty advocates.  They can settle among themselves whether teachers need more money or children need lunch programs.

Since this essentially pits the NDP against itself, I look forward to their answer to this question: are they a party at the service of unions, or are they a party at the service of the unfortunate?


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## mariomike (20 Nov 2012)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> I'm not sure what amount is equal to "gravy".



Productivity / workload is measured by Unit Hour Utilization (UhU). UhU measures the percentage of an hour that paramedics are actively engaged in responding to calls – as opposed to being deployed waiting for calls.

High performance ( urban ) systems may have UhU ratios as high as 0.50 or better; low performance ( rural ) systems typically score 0.25 or less. 
Publicly provided ambulance services consider 0.45 as the threshold for adding ambulances. Fire department-based EMS systems typically have UhU ratios of 0.3.

Toronto operates between 0.45 and 0.50.


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## Brad Sallows (21 Nov 2012)

>Publicly provided ambulance services consider 0.45 as the threshold for adding ambulances...Toronto operates between 0.45 and 0.50.

Sounds like a case of "Public spending has to increase each year for ...population growth (more services needed)".  But we don't know whether the revenue is lacking, or whether the money is there but has been squeezed out by other "imperatives".


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## Edward Campbell (21 Nov 2012)

Ambulances might present an interesting management challenge. Assuming that:

     1. Ambulances are reasonably easy to buy - lead times are in weeks or months, not years; and

     2. There is an acceptable pool of unemployed/underemployed/misemployed paramedics with a reasonable range; then

In that case, the city management can accept the risk of operating on or just above the statistical threshold because the "problem," when (not if) it arises, will be solved without resort to *crisis management*.

But consider e.g. long term care for the elderly "bed blockers" in our (very scarce) critical care beds: while e.g. nurses are readily available, there is a very long lead time (several years) required to build new long term or chronic care facilities and, given the existing cost/profit model, it is very likely that the "solution" will have to be publicly funded. (If the cost/profit model worked for business there would, given the current high *demand*, already be a healthy* *supply* of new chronic/long term care facilities.)

_____
* Pun intended


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## ModlrMike (21 Nov 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> But consider e.g. long term care for the elderly "bed blockers" in our (very scarce) critical care beds: while e.g. nurses are readily available, there is a very long lead time (several years) required to build new long term or chronic care facilities and, given the existing cost/profit model, it is very likely that the "solution" will have to be publicly funded. (If the cost/profit model worked for business there would, given the current high *demand*, already be a healthy* *supply* of new chronic/long term care facilities.)
> 
> _____
> * Pun intended



Interesting. We just had a similar conversation at work the other day. As part of my Masters, I had to do a unit in my Health Policy course on geriatrics vis-a-vis ER. The primary cause of ER wait times is blocked beds. Most of that is due to lack of spaces upstairs on the wards, which in turn is due to people waiting for placement in a PCH. Our PCH "waiting list" runs around 20% of occupancy, which compares to other centers like Montreal at 13%. We're at the lead edge of the baby boom wave here. The 1948 cohort is 65 years old next year. In five years, the demand for placement is going to increase exponentially year over year. Our Chief Medical Officer has made the Health Minister aware of this, and that it's only going to get worse, yet the Province is reluctant to build Personal Care Homes that in 30 years will no longer be needed. Equally, they're unwilling to build these facilities with the infrastructure in place to convert them to housing units later on. How short sighted is that? There's certainly no shortage of staff available to work at the new PCHs.


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## Edward Campbell (21 Nov 2012)

Yep! Life would be simpler if we could just recall what _Saint Tommy_ Douglas really wanted ~ protection from *catastrophic* medical bills through public insurance, instead of focusing on what Marxist ideologies like Monique Begin and Pierre Trudeau imposed upon us ~ the Canada Health Act.


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## mariomike (21 Nov 2012)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> But we don't know whether the revenue is lacking, or whether the money is there but has been squeezed out by other "imperatives".



Some of those imperatives are named and shamed in today's Sun.

TORONTO - What is the price of safety in Canada’s biggest city?:
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/11/21/ems-senior-managers-make-huge-overtime-claims

Selection of Toronto EMS management overtime payments:

•   Deputy Commander — base $100,000 rose to $142,00 with overtime
•   Commander Communications Centre — base $100,000 rose to $128,000
•   Superintendent Education and Development — base $95,000 rose to $119,000
•   Superintendent Operations — base $95,000 rose to $130,000
•   Superintendent Operations — base $95,000 rose to $119,000
•   Superintendent Operations — base $95,000 rose to $148,000
•   Deputy Commander — base $100,000 rose to $125,000
•   Superintendent Communications Centre — base $95,000 rose to $117,000
•   Superintendent Education & Development — base $95,000 rose to $121,000
•   Superintendent Education & Development — base $95,000 rose to $136,000
•   Commander Community Safeguard Services — base $105,000 rose to $139,000
•   Commander Operations — base $105,000 rose to $132,000
•   Superintendent Operations — base $95,000 rose to $137,000
•   Commander Operations — base $105,000 rose to $137,000
•   Superintendent Operations — base $95,000 rose to $140,000
•   Superintendent Operations — base $95,000 rose to $140,000
•   Commander Operations — base $105,000 — rose to $137,000 

A Superintendant is a Supervisor. A Commander is a Manager. These are not senior management positions ( Chiefs ).

“Ten years ago we could field 67 ambulances in a typical morning shift; now we are down to 60."


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## a_majoor (21 Nov 2012)

Moving away from the wage argument in the public sector to the larger economy, here is an interesting inversion of the standard tropes promoted by the poverty industry. If confirmed (and similar studies in other nations do tend to show the same pattern in liberal democracies) then the real answer to the poverty question is to identify and remove roadblocks to social mobility:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/20/poor-getting-richer/



> *‘Poor’ getting richer*
> Niels Veldhuis and Charles Lammam, Special to Financial Post | Nov 20, 2012 7:42 PM ET | Last Updated: Nov 21, 2012 12:38 PM ET
> More from Special to Financial Post
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (23 Nov 2012)

I regularly say that Canada is, in most things, one of the "world's top ten" nations, and, in almost every respect, always in the "top 10%." The _Economist_ agrees in its annual _"Top 10 Countiries in Which to be Born"_ report which is reported upon by _The Telegraph_: 

Top 10:

10. Hong Kong     (7.80/10)
9.   Canada          (7.81/10)
8.   Netherlands   (7.94/10)
7.   New Zealand (7.95/10)
6.   Singapore      (8.00/10)
5.   Denmark        (8.01/10)
4.   Sweden         (8.02/10)
3.   Norway          (8.09/10)
2.   Australia        (8.12/10)
*1.  Switzerland  (8.22/10)* Best country in which to be born in 2012/13

There's not too much (0.22/10) between 1st and 10th; the survey considers: GDP, life expectancy, quality of family life, political freedom, job security, climate and gender equality, and  economic forecasts for 2030.


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## a_majoor (26 Nov 2012)

And now the bad news as an infographic from the National Post. Every Canadian is in debt to the tune of $16,883 for the Federal portion, and depending on the province, by a greater or lesser amount of additional debt (Alberta excepted). Rising interest costs when interest rates rise will make things even worse, yet there seems to be no real plan by any government anywhere to take serious action. Not states in the infographic are unfunded liabilities like pensions or Municipal debts, so the actual figures are far higher.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/11/23/graphic-canadas-national-debt/


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## a_majoor (28 Nov 2012)

More on why we are so uncompetative; if this level of bureaucracy is getting in the way of a single project in BC, extrapolate across Canada (and scale to every level of business; I recently listened to a horror story about a woman in the Niagara region who wanted to open a small, boutique, winery. She needed to fill forms and get approvals from 8 different bureaucracies; just for an operation that would have hired 4 people....)

Since overspending is the source of the economic crisis, pruning and streamlining the bureaucracy will be a twofer: Eliminating thousands of bureaucrats (and their wages and benefits), and allowing productive projects to come on line and create new wealth faster:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/11/27/koch-weissenberger-a-mountain-of-bureaucracy-for-b-c-s-jumbo-ski-resort/



> *Koch & Weissenberger: A mountain of bureaucracy for B.C.’s Jumbo ski resort*
> 
> George Koch and John Weissenberger, Special to National Post | Nov 27, 2012 12:01 AM ET | Last Updated: Nov 27, 2012 12:02 AM ET
> More from Special to National Post
> ...


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## a_majoor (29 Nov 2012)

Ontario will be an anchor around the rest of the Canadian economy for years to come. Inexpensive energy has been the cornerstone of our wealth for generations, Ontario's Liberal government has managed to invert the premise and provide expensive energy in just nine years. Rising rates will drive out manufacturing and energy intensive industries, while the high rates and high interest rates OPG will have to borrow money at will suck investment money out of the economy, preventing the creation of new jobs and wealth:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/28/terence-corcoran-another-downgrade-for-ratepayers/



> *Terence Corcoran: Another downgrade for ratepayers*
> 
> Terence Corcoran | Nov 28, 2012 8:46 PM ET | Last Updated: Nov 28, 2012 9:04 PM ET
> More from Terence Corcoran | @terencecorcoran
> ...


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## foresterab (30 Nov 2012)

Taken from the Globe and Mail today: http://gold.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/search/GAM/20121130/RBECONLABLABOUR1129ATL/stocks/news?back_url=yes

People without jobs, jobs without people 
TAVIA GRANT
00:00 EST Friday, Nov 30, 2012


It's Canada's labour market conundrum: Evidence suggests skills shortages in the country's jobs market are growing, while at the same time pools of labour surplus are also increasing.

On one hand, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said this month that skills shortages are "the biggest challenge our country faces." He's concerned about looming shortfalls of engineers and scientists and wants new immigrants to help fill the gaps.

But on the other, a quarter of a million Canadians have been jobless for more than six months and this country appears to have too many people in some professions, such as tour guides and factory labourers, according to a report Thursday that seeks to untangle the duelling trends.

"This labour market mismatch is big enough not only to reduce the effectiveness of monetary policy, but also to limit the growth potential of the labour market and the economy as a whole," CIBC World Markets Inc. deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal said in his analysis.

First, he examines labour shortages. At least three in 10 businesses say they face a skilled labour shortage, CIBC says, based on Bank of Canada and Statistics Canada calculations. That number is double the rate of early 2010.

The increase in skills shortage concerns comes as Canada's employment rate stagnated, "loosely" suggesting these shortages are having a negative impact on job growth.

Meantime, the number of job vacancies reported by companies has jumped 16 per cent in the past year, led by openings in Alberta.

Cries of skilled labour shortages should be taken with a few grains of salt because they are subjective measures, Mr. Tal notes.

"Yes, a CEO might indicate that her company is facing a skilled labour shortage, but is it severe enough to force her to raise wages and/or increase on-the-job training activity? Actions speak louder than words."

Delving deeper, he looked at 25 occupations with both rapid increases in wages and low or falling unemployment rates - areas that are showing clear signs of a tight labour market.

He found the largest skill shortages were in health occupations, the mining industry, advanced manufacturing and business services. Together, these occupations comprise a fifth of total employment in Canada.

Therefore, "one-fifth of the Canadian labour market is currently showing signs of skilled labour shortage," he said.

Government efforts to bring in more skilled immigrants and boost apprenticeship programs are welcome; however, they won't be enough to fill these gaps, he said.

Next, Mr. Tal examined labour surpluses. He looked at 20 occupations with rising unemployment and slowing wage growth - a pool that includes food counter attendants and recreational guides.

These jobs account for a fifth of unemployment in Canada.

This might help explain why the duration of joblessness is still high. The average length of unemployment is 16 weeks - five weeks longer than pre-recession levels, and two weeks above the average rate seen since the early 2000s.

A quarter of a million Canadians have been unemployed for more than six months, accounting for 18 per cent of total unemployment in the country. While the long-term jobless rate has come down in the past two years, it is still higher than its long-term average, especially among people over the age of 45.

The mismatch means measures of long-term unemployment are likely to even climb higher, he said.

Retraining efforts should be part of the solution, he added - something the federal and some provincial governments are tackling, to various degrees.

For now, though, the people-without-jobs and jobs-without-people conundrum remains.

Economy Lab delves into the forces that shape Canadians' standard of living. Find it at tgam.ca/economylab, or follow it on Twitter via @Economy_Lab


Working in Alberta in the natural resources industry I see this alot...wages are going up and labor is very tight in my profession but overall wages especially in the service industries (where the other half works) have remained stable in part due to the ease of entry into some of those professions.  While this has implications on the other post here regarding Educating our Future Leaders http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/108384.0.html   it also becomes a major problem in growing the economy (and hence tax/debt/deficiet relief) if companies can not grow due to staff shortages.


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## mariomike (30 Nov 2012)

> He found the largest skill shortages were in health occupations, the mining industry, advanced manufacturing and business services.



This comes at a time when Baby Boomers are reaching the end of their careers, creating a demand for suitable replacements.

Paramedics expected to be in high demand over next decade:
http://www.canada.com/health/Paramedics+expected+high+demand+over+next+decade/6561136/story.html

"While there were positions available all over the province, many of us were competing for the positions available in the Greater Toronto Area." 

Toronto's Call Volume has increased by 30 per cent over the last ten years. *

With all the new high-rise condominiums under construction in the city combined with the "aging tsunami" and universal health care, Call Volume is likely to continue to flourish.

* In 1968 T-EMS responded to 70,258 calls for help. Now, they respond to over 315,000 emergency calls per year.  Their geographic area remains exactly the same size.

“Looking at EMS into the future, we’re going to need to deal with the rising call demand. There’s no question about that." Chief of T-EMS. 

"( Yet ) the number of fires ( in Toronto ) has fallen, from 3,700 in 1960 to just 2,239 last year". 
National Post 16 July, 2011


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## a_majoor (2 Dec 2012)

Municipal budgets don't get nearly the attention they should, yet the combined effect of their out of control spending may rival that of some of our provinces. London, Ontario alone has a budget approaching a billion dollars a year, and a debt of @ $400 million, yet boasts some of the worst roads and infrastructure in the province. Municipal politicians have simply abandoned infrastructure in favour of paying for "fun" projects like downtown arenas (ours costs the taxpayer roughly 4.5 million/year in interest costs, which makes the management company quite happy).

Colorado Springs may be showing us the future of civic management:

http://reason.com/blog/2012/11/30/self-reliance-and-tight-budgeting-got-co



> *Self-Reliance and Tight Budgeting Got Colorado Springs Through the Recession*
> J.D. Tuccille|Nov. 30, 2012 12:08 pm
> 
> Sometimes it takes an outsider's perspective to point out to people the reality that's around them. So it is with Canada's National Post, which surveyed the troubled behemoth to its south, and found an example of Americans responding to recession-shriveled tax revenues and government services by boldly doing stuff for themselves.
> ...



And the link to the National Post article: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/11/25/colorado-springs-recession/


----------



## Edward Campbell (2 Dec 2012)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is a fairly direct answer, in so far as Europe minus a very small handful of exceptional countries is concerned:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/european-business/tech-drives-nails-into-coffins-of-europes-weak-economies/article5856181/
> 
> ...




The above, from the "Why Europe Keeps Failing" thread and this recent article in the _National Post_ about our free trade negotiations with the EU shows why Canada is not anywhere near as "productive" as it can be, should be and *must* be if it wants to survive as something other than an American colony.

_*Productivity*_ is nothing more than how well we use our resources - natural, human, financial and cultural - to produce goods and services that we and others need and want to buy. We are a blessed country and, for more than 30 years, for a whole human generation, we have "grown" our economy one only one of those resources - natural resources. ALL of our growth has been due to the high market demand for resources (uranium, potash, oil, etc); i say ALL because our productivity, relative to the USA, has actually declined in 30 years - we have gotten richer despite being less and less efficient. 

Productivity is NOT about lazy workers. In fact the cost of labour is a relatively minor part of the productivity equation. We have a good, well educated labour force; we have abundant natural resources; our currency and banks are sound; but we get less and less "productive." Why?

The answer lies in the fourth item: our socio-political culture.

While, in the past 150 years, our economy has transformed itself from agriculture and resource extraction (hewers of wood and drawers of water) to industrial and on to services, our social culture has remained stagnant, rooted in a combination of Bismark's German social programmes _circa_ 1885 and French Canadian _statism_. Equally, our political culture is incredibly _conservative_: risk averse and resistant to reform. Even our innate Scots Presbyterian parsimony is unable to counter the effects of _statism_ and _timidity_. Remember when Brian Mulroney tried to reform old age pensions by, sensibly, "de-indexing" them in 1985? It was good, even innovative policy but a little lady named Solange Denis shouted "You lied to us ... I was made to vote for you and then it’s good-bye, Charlie Brown!” Mulroney lost his nerve and no politician, not Jean Chretien and not Stephen Harper, has developed any guts in the intervening 25+ years. 

BUT: our social programmes, the set of policies that Canadians claim, over and over and over again, "define" us as a people, are ALL wrong. They are, taken individually and collectively either or both inefficiently designed or unaffordable.

The only things that have kept us from going broke in the last 30_ish_ years are:

1. The strong market demand for natural resources; and

2. The fact, and it is a fact, that our main competitors have polices that are as bad or worse than ours.

BUT: the resource market has always been cyclical plus big resource consumers, like China, are developing other, competitive markets, hoping to drive _supply_ up and prices down. Further it is not clear that the USA, our main competitor, can avoid reforming its own social programmes in the face of a real economic/productivity crisis. If they do reform then we will either have to follow suit or fall even further behind.


----------



## Edward Campbell (2 Dec 2012)

And see this for a graphic description of out-of-control social programme spending ... in the USA, but equally applicable to e.g. Ontario.


----------



## a_majoor (5 Dec 2012)

Interesting take on where the real problems in productivity and "dead money" really lie:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/12/04/jack-mintz-dead-money-is-in-government/



> Jack Mintz: ‘Dead money’ is in government
> 
> Jack M. Mintz | Dec 4, 2012 8:17 PM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (5 Dec 2012)

And a warning. The "Big Data" fad may have interesting managerial consequences (mostly to do with being able to do pattern analysis after the fact), but I can see calls for this to become bureaucratic "standard practice", including calls for ever more personal data to be delivered over to government agencies in order for them to usd "Big Data" analysis to operate ever more "efficiently"

AS Corcan reminds us, F.A. Hayek had recognized the flaw in that sort of thinking as far back as 1945, and in economic, social or ecological systems, we are dealing with mathematically "chaotic" systems with thousands of millions of inputs and non linear responses. No matter how "big" your data set or how fast your computers and algorithms, you will always be behind the curve (and using up more and more resources to do so):

http://www.nationalpost.com/Data+Hayek+Dead/7649239/story.html



> *Big Data: Is Hayek Dead?*
> 
> Terence Corcoran, National Post · Dec. 4, 2012 | Last Updated: Dec. 4, 2012 12:03 PM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (6 Dec 2012)

There's a reason I hoped Mark Garneau would join the Liberal Party of Canada leadership race; he has, as I have said, _gravitas_, which is on display in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/marc-garneau-new-taxes-and-spending-cuts-arent-the-only-things-government-can-do/article6019750/
My emphasis added


> New taxes and spending cuts aren’t the only things government can do
> 
> MARC GARNEAU
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




This, the highlighted bit, anyway, could have been written by someone like David Dodge, Don Drummond or Kevin Lynch; it *should* have been written by Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty or Christian Paradis. It is sound policy ... but, sadly, not very good politics, _productivity_ is not sexy.


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## GAP (6 Dec 2012)

Gee....I seem to remember similiar grand designs from the Liberals before.......I can't seem to remember them ever actually delivering them.....


----------



## a_majoor (7 Dec 2012)

If people like Martha Hall Findley and Marc Garneau keep expounding on what would seem to be traditionally Conservative (if not Reform) ideas like elimiating marketing boards and improving economic productivity, then perhaps they are making a play for the "Blue Liberals". It is either that or they are sleeper agents for the CPC.

Anyone know roughly what proportion of the LPC is actually "blue"?


----------



## a_majoor (7 Dec 2012)

Back to the economy. Using the economic freedom index to rate Premiers is good idea:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/12/07/jesse-kline-the-best-and-worst-premiers-of-2012-and-why-it-matters/



> *Jesse Kline: The best, and worst, premiers of 2012 — and why it matters*
> 
> Jesse Kline | Dec 7, 2012 10:12 AM ET | Last Updated: Dec 7, 2012 10:48 AM ET
> More from Jesse Kline | @accessd
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (9 Dec 2012)

Using (gasp) market forces to deliver goods and services to the public. What will they think of next </sarc>

Once ideas like this catch on, we should expect to see them applied to more and more things that are presently exclusively done by governments and bureaucracies. If anyone wants to use the slur "American style health care" in applying this model to health expenditures, calmly reply you are advocating "Singapore style health care" (you can also insert "Singapore style" to any other expendature as well):

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/12/07/lawrence-solomon-move-into-the-fast-lane/



> *Lawrence Solomon: Move into the fast lane*
> 
> Lawrence Solomon | Dec 7, 2012 9:44 PM ET | Last Updated: Dec 7, 2012 9:46 PM ET
> More from Lawrence Solomon
> ...


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## ModlrMike (9 Dec 2012)

> ...with Manitoba’s Greg Selinger coming in dead last.



If there's anything I've learned here it's that once you think the bar's been set at its lowest ebb, someone manages to sneak under it.


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## a_majoor (10 Dec 2012)

This could be very bad news on several fronts.

The popping of a housing bubble will have very profound effects on the rest of the Canadian economy, most of them negative.

The pain this creates will provide an opening for poplist/leftist parties to crank up the blame machine, win elections and impose counterprioductive policies which will simply prolong the crisis (read the "Forgotten Man" by Amity Shlaes, or look at recent [post 2008] events). Charts on link:

http://princearthurherald.com/news/detail/?id=73027d57-b972-42c8-940f-8147447993d5



> *The magnitude of Canada's housing crisis*
> BY HANEEF WALLANI
> 5 December 2012
> 
> ...


----------



## Nemo888 (10 Dec 2012)

I agree with Thucydides again. Housing is out of whack. As a percentage of income housing costs have never been this high in Canada(150 years). Going only by historical averages the amount of monthly income dedicated to housing should drop 15 to 20%. More in some cities where a greater percentage of income goes to housing costs. This is not an island, such rampant speculation is unsustainable and will cripple our economy.


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## a_majoor (10 Dec 2012)

And an argument against a national securities regulator. Most of what a national regulator could "do" could also be accomplished by simply having jurisdictions agree to each other's rules in the case of cross border entities. The EU and the United States have similar issues with cross border regulations as well; some lessons can be derived from their experience:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/12/06/power-to-the-provinces/



> *Power to the provinces*
> 
> Bryce C. Tingle, Special to Financial Post | Dec 6, 2012 9:12 PM ET
> More from Special to Financial Post
> ...


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## a_majoor (14 Dec 2012)

More on how regulatory failure distorts and negatively affects the market. Toronto city council demonstrates the effect at the "micro" scale, but politicians attempting to pick winners and losers in the marketplace is endemic at all levels of government:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/12/14/pinball-cafe-closure-over-having-more-than-two-pinball-machines-highlights-absurdity-of-bylaw-bureaucracy-at-city-hall/



> *Pinball Cafe closure over having more than two pinball machines highlights absurdity of bylaw bureaucracy at City Hall*
> 
> Chris Selley | Dec 14, 2012 5:39 PM ET | Last Updated: Dec 14, 2012 5:40 PM ET
> More from Chris Selley | @cselley
> ...


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## Old Sweat (15 Dec 2012)

Andrew Coyne reports on the lack of growth in income inequality in Canada, and the Toronto Star's take on it, in this piece from the National Post's site which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.

Andrew Coyne: Every one of the ailments we imagine ourselves to be suffering is a reality in the U.S.
Andrew Coyne | Dec 14, 2012 7:58 PM ET | Last Updated: Dec 14, 2012 9:39 PM ET

It was perhaps the most shocking headline ever to appear in the Toronto Star. “Income gap isn’t growing,” it ran, citing a “TD bank report.” Sure enough, the report found that income inequality in Canada has remained more or less flat since the mid 1990s. As if that were not alarming enough, it found median household incomes in this country grew steadily over the same period, to the point where they now exceed those of the United States for the first time in nearly 30 years.

The paper was clearly flummoxed. The story managed to extract a confession from the economist who did the study that he too had been “surprised” by the results (an “absolute stunner”). How to explain it? “Part of the problem,” the story mused — the “problem” being the failure of the data to show rising inequality — “is the way income inequality is measured.” That is, the study looked at inequality of income. But what about inequality of wealth? That could be increasing, couldn’t it? By the time the story appeared online the paper had recovered its composure. “Canadian income gap may be more real than data suggests,” the headline now read.

It shouldn’t really be surprising to find that none of it is actually true
In fact the study didn’t find any trend towards increased concentration of wealth, either. But never mind. The Star can be forgiven for its astonishment. Because if there has been one article of faith in recent years, not only in the Star but throughout the media, it has been that Canada is beset by “growing inequality,” to say nothing of “stagnating incomes.” Throw in the “vanishing middle class” and you have a catechism of media verities, repeated endlessly, just as if they were real.

And yet it shouldn’t really be surprising to find that none of it is actually true. It didn’t take a study by the TD Bank’s chief economist to disprove it. The evidence was sitting there the whole time on Statistics Canada’s website. All anyone had to do was look.

That’s not to say that income inequality was not growing in the past. Between 1989 and 1998, the Gini coefficient for Canada — a measure of inequality with 0 representing perfect equality and 1 being perfect inequality — increased from .38 to .42. It just hasn’t budged since then. (Possible Star headline: Income gap fails to narrow.)

Another way to look at inequality is to compare the fortunes of people in different income groups, usually quintiles (fifths), over time. Here again the picture is of stability, not stratification. As the TD economists found, incomes in the bottom quintile have grown by 20% since 1998, to 18% for those in the upper quintile. Again, while there was some widening of the gap in earlier decades — from 45% in 1976, the share of income going to the top fifth had increased to 50% by the mid 1990s — it has since held steady.

The picture is even brighter if you consider inequality in yet a third way: as the difference, not between rich and poor, but between the poor and the middle. The proportion of people living below Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cut-Off, a relativistic measure based on the proportion of its income a poor family would have to spend on necessities to maintain itself in the same style as the average family, has fallen from 15% in 1996 to 9% in 2010 — the lowest it has been since at least 1976. A more strictly relative measure, the number of those living below one-half the median income, shows no trend over the same period.

Why was income inequality growing before, and is not now? The explanation is very simple. In the early 1980s and early 1990s, Canada went through two nasty recessions — the first deeper, the second longer. Whenever there is a recession, and for some time after, more people are out of work for at least part of the year, and as such earning very little income. That drags down incomes for those at the bottom — hence increasing both poverty and inequality — but also for the median.

In the past two decades, however, Canada has experienced more or less uninterrupted growth. Hence falling unemployment, hence declining poverty, rising incomes and flattening inequality. Why has none of this registered in the public mind? Why have we heard nothing of the record low numbers living on low income? Why is it common knowledge things are getting more unequal, when in fact they are not?

One reason is that we have changed our definition of inequality. Instead of looking at the gap between rich and poor, or the poor and the middle, attention has shifted to the gap between the very rich and everyone else: the top 1%. Yet even here the “growing gap” is no longer growing. The share of all income going to the top 1%, according to figures provided to the TD by Michael Veall, the reigning Canadian expert on the subject, was 13.6% as of 2010, down from a peak of nearly 16% — again, about where it was in 1998. The big surge was in the decades before that.

So again: how have we convinced ourselves it is increasing? One is forced to conclude it is the influence of the American media. Every one of the ailments we imagine ourselves to be suffering is a reality in the United States: where our incomes are growing, theirs are stagnating; where poverty here is at record lows, there it is at record highs; where inequality in Canada has not grown in recent years, in the United States it has surged.

Again, the explanation, at least in part, is not hard to find. While we have been largely spared the ravages of recession in the last decade, the Americans have endured two, the last especially severe. The big surprise in that TD study, it would seem, is that Canada is not the United States.


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## a_majoor (18 Dec 2012)

Politics is on our side in terms of energy investment, and will be until at least 2014 (and more likely 2016). Best take advantage of our window of opportunity:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/12/17/us-vs-canada-in-the-energy-revolution/



> *Canada Leaps Past Dithering US in Energy Race*
> 
> Energy companies are already focused on the shale boom in the U.S., but now they are increasingly turning to America’s neighbor to the north. Both the U.S. and Canada are sitting atop massive quantities of oil and gas that could fetch high prices on the world market. Both countries face unique sets of challenges in getting that energy to market.
> 
> ...


----------



## foresterab (18 Dec 2012)

This is a huge issue...Liguified Natural Gas...for all of Western Canada.  There exists a number of competitive potential advantages that the US may not have..

1) port capacity is an issue at most major US terminals and due to the safety concerns of LNG space is a premium...Canada has Prince Rupert..which also has an under-utilized rail line
2) World capital acceptance.  Stock exchanges over time tend to develop and Canada has a reputation on both the TSX Venture and TSX as being one of the major hubs for both mining and small oil and gas.  Nasdaq is good for health care and technology stocks and the NYSE is good for major multi-nationals companies.  As a result new players..both small and large are followed closely in Canada for the LNG market.
3) Asian connections.  While I'm not really familiar with Asian based cultures Canada immigrants and history of acceptance has provided some critical connections with many of the markets in Japan, Malaysia...
4) Trade politics.  Nexan and Petronas deals approved by the federal government recently were major wins for the LNG force.  Nexan's takeover by CNOC had major opposition due to drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico and the US had talked about prohibiting CNOC from operating in the US despite most of Nexan's assets being located outside of North America.  Petronas has been a major investor in the LNG development alongside of Shell (Royal Dutch Shell anyone from Europe?? They have a few dollars to their name) on the BC west coast.  Canada has shown that foreign capital and investment in Canada is welcome but without alot of the politcal rhetoric of our southern neighbor.
5) This affects all of Canada as eastern Canada has large potential deposits especially in Quebec and New Brunswick.  Test drilling in both jurisdictions have been promising but legislation and physical transportation infrastructure remain stumbling blocks.  As technology is proven up in the western Canada the east stands to gain from both the success and failures.
6) A growing national awareness of oil and gas and it's impacts (both good and bad).  When half of Canada is paying for fuel based off of world market Brent Crude ($108/barrel currently) and half is selling oil at West Texas Intermidiate at $88/barrel or less (heavy oil is up to $20 per barrel less than WTI on the open market) there is an obvious economic impact to Canada...in part due to a lack of infrastructure East/West for products.

Lots going on but it should make for an entertaining next couple of years.


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## Edward Campbell (20 Dec 2012)

Old Sweat said:
			
		

> Andrew Coyne reports on the lack of growth in income inequality in Canada, and the Toronto Star's take on it, in this piece from the National Post's site which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.
> 
> Andrew Coyne: Every one of the ailments we imagine ourselves to be suffering is a reality in the U.S.
> Andrew Coyne | Dec 14, 2012 7:58 PM ET | Last Updated: Dec 14, 2012 9:39 PM ET
> ...





Coyne's argument is, at least partially, offset by this graph:






Source: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/Pew_History_Middle_Class_Families_Income_History.PNG

In the 1980s and 1990s the rich got richer and, in the '80s, at least, the poor got poorer.

The graph refers only to the USA; the data will, I suspect be very _similar_ for Australia, Britain and Canada, less similar (less inequality) for Denmark, Finland and Norway, and even less similar (far greater inequality) for Argentina, Brazil and Chile.


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## a_majoor (20 Dec 2012)

An interesting primer on "Social Impact Bonds". The PCPO has added this to their policy platform mix, which is a change from the usual "lets throw unlimited amounts of money at the problem" tropes. How this will work is an experiment I would love to see, radical changes are needed to both make a difference for people who are in need and for the taxpayer (who deserves better results for the money being spent). Follow the link for a large Q&A section:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2012/12/05/46934/frequently-asked-questions-social-impact-bonds/



> *Frequently Asked Questions: Social Impact Bonds*
> 
> A social impact bond agreement involves the interests of multiple stakeholders, including agencies at different levels of government, the external organizations with whom the government will contract, the service providers whom the external organizations will oversee, the investors who will provide working capital to run the interventions, and the public at large.
> By Kristina Costa, Sonal Shah, Sam Ungar, and the Social Impact Bonds Working Group | December 5, 2012
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (21 Dec 2012)

Some provocative thoughts on pipelines, petroleum and politics from Vancouver author Vivian Krause in an article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Post_:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/28/vivian-krause-u-s-greens-shut-down-canadian-oil/


> U.S. greens shut down Canadian oil
> 
> Vivian Krause, Special to Financial Post
> 
> ...




This has a bit of a _conspiracy theory_ whiff about it but it's hard to argue with her numbers.


----------



## Edward Campbell (22 Dec 2012)

And here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_, is columnist Andrew Coyne's assessment of 2012 from Prime Minister Harper's governing perspective:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/12/21/andrew-coyne-2012-the-year-the-harper-government-finally-found-a-sense-of-direction/


> 2012, the year the Harper government finally found a sense of direction
> 
> Andrew Coyne
> 
> ...




I agree that the Jan speech as Davos was an important, even pivotal event; I also agree that there is still much to be done.

We need to take Coyne's F-35 comments with a grain of salt: the entire _commentariat_ has a vested interest in this "story" which is, at bottom, really an accounting debate about an important, high value, project.

Finally, parliamentary democracy is not in danger ~ no more than it was in the 1730s when Robert Walpole was as hated and reviled as is Stephen Harper today. Britain both survived Walpole and has every reason to be grateful for his stewardship and direction; we see Walpole, now, as being amongst Britain's greatest ever statesmen; I expect Canada will survive Stephen Harper and, eventually, see him as, at least, a good prime minister.


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## GAP (22 Dec 2012)

> I expect Canada will survive Stephen Harper and, eventually, see him as, at least, a good prime minister.



I think there are a majority of Canadians who already agree with you...


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## foresterab (4 Jan 2013)

Taken from the Globe and Mail today:http://gold.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GI/20130103/escenic_6902741/stocks/news/&back_url=yes


Streetwise: Why the global banks love Canada
BOYD ERMAN
13:53 EST Thursday, Jan 03, 2013
  


China is growing, London remains crucial as a global financial centre, but the real money in investment banking lately is in Canada.

For the first time since Thomson Reuters began tracking fees in 2000, Canadian deals produced more investment banking fees than those in any country save the United States last year. Canada jumped to the No. 2 spot globally in 2012 from No. 4, according to Thomson Reuters, leapfrogging much bigger countries.

Canada generated almost $4.9-billion (U.S.) of investment-banking fees for banks, a 9.1-per-cent increase from 2011 and about 6.5 per cent of the global total. In comparison, the United Kingdom, home to the global financial centre that is London, generated $3.76-billion and the United States rang up $35.6-billion.

Canada’s economy is far smaller than that of countries such as China, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Germany, but the deal economy is much stronger as foreign capital floods into Canadian resources and strong Canadian companies look to acquire abroad.

Every time they do make a purchase, or raise money through a loan or a stock sale, that means fees for banks. And that revenue is drawing banks to Canada even as they retrench in other financial centres.

“If you look at where the growth is in that fee wallet, it’s clearly cross-border,” said Bruce Rothney, Canadian country head for Barclays, one of the global banks that has made a big investment in Canada in recent years.

“We think about bringing Canada to the world and the world to Canada, and I think everyone is thinking along those lines,” Mr. Rothney added.

The result is that the investment banking hubs of Toronto and Calgary are thriving, relative to cities such as New York and London. Employment in the securities industry in Canada has held steady at around 40,000 people in recent years, while other global financial centres have seen mass layoffs. International firms are in many cases expanding in Toronto and in the oil patch.

Jefferies & Co., one of the big independent U.S. firms, last year opened up an investment-banking business in Canada. Stifel Nicolaus, another independent in the U.S., has quietly been growing. Merger advice boutique Evercore Partners set up shop. The locals are also doing well, with four Canadian firms making the Thomson Reuters ranking of the top 25 banks by fees won.

“We had one of our best years that we’ve ever had,” said Darryl White, head of global corporate and investment banking at Bank of Montreal’s capital markets unit, which jumped six spots to 18th place.

Canada has consistently punched above its weight in fees, ranking in the top five for many years running with China, Japan, the U.K. and the perennial No. 1, the U.S. That’s something Mr. Rothney said he was surprised to find when researching the market when joining Barclays in 2010 to lead its expansion in Canada.

“Canada has been very strong for a number of reasons,” he said. “Clearly the resource economy piece is a long-term secular trend that we don’t see going away.”

However, it’s also easy to forget, with all the hooplah generated by big foreign acquisitions of Canadian resource producers, that Canadian firms spend a lot of money acquiring companies abroad – more than flows into Canada in many years.

Big drivers of that are Canada’s huge pension funds, which buy assets all over the globe. The pension funds have more than “$1-trillion of buying power there and they are pound for pound among the smarter investors,” Mr. Rothney said.

If there’s one underlying concern, however, it’s that Canada is “dumping all eggs into one basket,” said capital markets recruiter Bill Vlaad, head of Vlaad & Co. Many firms are largely focused on commodities, and still adding. Mr. Vlaad says he knows of about a half dozen openings for senior mining bankers.

If there’s a sustained downturn in deal making in those sectors, serious downsizing in groups dealing with mining, energy and agriculture could be the result.

“We are right out at the end of the diving board when it comes to the mining and oil gas focus, which is great when we are digging and drilling but what happens when we are not?” Mr. Vlaad said.




This is huge in attracting the financial capital needed for major infrastructure and advanced resource development but also comes with a big risk as the article states "“We are right out at the end of the diving board when it comes to the mining and oil gas focus, which is great when we are digging and drilling but what happens when we are not?”    So a great first step that hopefully leads to another.


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## a_majoor (7 Jan 2013)

While this article is about the United States, it has pratical applications for Canada as well. On theme running through this thread is why Canadian productivity is so low? Part of this may well be regulatory failure; the process of governments diverting savings and investment towards crony capitalists through the taxation process ("picking winners and losers"). Notice that in several of the examples presented, the "next stage" isn't intuitively obvious (garments to electronics?), so bureaucrats might never be able to discern and exploit these possibilities. F.A. Hayek discovered why this is true when discussing the "Local Knowledge Problem"

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509281/you-must-make-the-new-machines/



> *You Must Make the New Machines*
> 
> Economist Ricardo Hausmann says the U.S. has a chance to invent the manufacturing technology of tomorrow.
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (8 Jan 2013)

It really is  :deadhorse:  day today; here is an article about another of my favourites ~ the relationship I believe exists between "freedom" and prosperity (economic relevance) ~ which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Fraser Institute's_ web site:

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/news/display.aspx?id=19171


> Canada, Australia and Ireland tied for fourth in new comprehensive index of human freedom; New Zealand No. 1 and the U.S. and Denmark tied for seventh
> 
> Media Contacts:	Fred McMahon
> 
> ...




The entire book is available for (free) download here.  The "freedom" rankings can be found on p. 63. It is worthwhile noting that Hong Kong, despite having a (relatively) low index of "personal freedom" (7.8 ) has such a high index of "economic freedom" (9.2) that it, narrowly, squeaks past Australia and Canada to capture 3rd spot. Check out the bottom of the list: Zimbabwe, Burma, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Syria ~ pretty much a good description of where one might start a global enema. Note, also, that Singapore, which I often hold up as a "beacon" _conservative democracy_ is ranked fairly well down the list because of a low (6.6) personal freedom score which is attributed to the _liberal_ bias of the authors who are concerned because Singapore restricts "freedom of association" and, to a lesser extent, "freedom of speech."


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## foresterab (9 Jan 2013)

http://gold.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GI/20130109/escenic_7095413/stocks/news/&back_url=yes


This article shows one of the issues with urban planning that again shows a big bottleneck on the Canadian economy as a whole.  With ~ 9 million residents betweeen Vancouver, Toronto (GTA area) and Montreal we are now talking about ~25% of the population of Canada spending large amounts on time in commutes.  While I don't have solutions it does show some of the impacts poor, long term urban planning can have moving forward.


Top Business: Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal among worst for traffic congestion in N. America
Michael Babad
07:52 EST Wednesday, Jan 09, 2013
  

These are stories Report on Business is following Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013.

Follow Michael Babad and the Globe’s top business stories on Twitter.

Road runners
Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal rank among the worst cities in North America for traffic congestion, according to an annual study.

The findings by TomTom are important because, not only is there our frustration level to think of, there’s also the issue of time spent getting to and from work, and, thus, our productivity (particularly given that we’re not supposed to be on our smartphones while driving).

No surprise here, but the worst city is Los Angeles, where it takes drivers 34 per cent longer, on average, to get where they’re going than when traffic is “flowing freely.” And, of course, it’s far higher in rush hour. The average for North America is 19 per cent, according to the third such study by TomTom, a manufacturer of navigation products based in Amsterdam.

What may be more surprising is that the three Canadian cities rank in the top 10, which, of course, means the 10 worst. Indeed, Vancouver holds the distinction of being No. 2, and shares with L.A. the 34-per-cent level.

Vancouver is followed by San Francisco in the No. 3 spot (33 per cent), Honolulu at No. 4 (31 per cent), and Seattle at No. 5 (27 per cent). The next five, in order, include Toronto (26 per cent), New Orleans (25 per cent), San Jose (25 per cent), Montreal (24 per cent) and Chicago (24 per cent).

The TomTom Congestion Index is based on data from July to September of last year.

Read the TomTom study 
Interactive: Why's the most congested street in Toronto? 
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair calls for return to photo radar


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## Edward Campbell (9 Jan 2013)

In densely populated urben centres - and I am most familiar with the ones in Asia - the trick seems to be:

1. Build *excellent* high speed, reliable, high capacity and *cheap* public transit networks - a mix of busses, trams and trains;

2. Make it hard for private autos to stop or park on inner-city streets;

3. Conversely, make it easy for taxis , buses and commercial vehicles to use all roads; and

4. Use the underground as much as possible - including tunnels for autos and trucks.


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## a_majoor (9 Jan 2013)

Years ago, when I ran for Mayor, I did discover a reasonably flexible, low cost alternative for Canadian urban centers. Known as "Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)". it involves subdividing the city into local areas, which feed into BRT terminals. The "Rapid Transit" buses move quickly between terminals (sometimes they are assisted by special bus only lanes or using an "opticon" to trigger green lights ahead of them, depending on the urban infrastructure available), depositing the riders back to another local network.

For a city like London, BRT eliminates the long and arduous bus routes that run from one end of the city to the other (which often take over 2 hr to ride), as well as eliminating a well intentioned bottleneck in the system (in order to please downtown merchants and "save the core" activists; all bus lines run through downtown) without requiring much more than rerouting and rescheduling most of the buses. There are several large shopping malls spaced around the perimeter of the city, some with "terminal" type bus stop layouts already, which would be an ideal fit for the network/BRT terminals.

As a lesson in politics, although it would seem to be very cheap in theory, the manager of the LTC attached a huge price tag to this, evidently intending to piggyback fleet renewal and a host of other things onto the project. The last two city councils didn't bite, and the BRT idea seems to have faded away.


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## a_majoor (9 Jan 2013)

Regulatory failure on a grand scale. Milk quotas are used to keep a competitor out of the Canadian market, destroy investment and jobs and keep consumers paying more for their products. The government can't move fast enough on this file, and waiting for the TPP as a cover to take action, while strategically "smart", is still hurting Canadians in the short and medium term. Upthread I posted an earlier story about this; because of the quota system farmers cannot sell milk at a premium to this company but must accept a much lower price to sell the milk as animal feed, so this hurts farmers as well:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/01/08/banned-in-canada/



> *Banned in Canada*
> Ian Cumming, Special to Financial Post | Jan 8, 2013 8:17 PM ET | Last Updated: Jan 8, 2013 8:22 PM ET
> More from Special to Financial Post
> 
> ...


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## Jed (9 Jan 2013)

How about attempting to encourage Canadians to develop smaller urban centres, say 10,000 people or so instead of pushing the trend for everyone to move into the city?  The wear and tear on the infrastructure should be considerably less, and hopefully the pace of life would slow down and be less stressful. 

With modern technology, many bureaucratic office jobs no longer need to be done in larger centralized locations. Service jobs are the same whereever they are undertaken.


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## dapaterson (9 Jan 2013)

Jed said:
			
		

> How about attempting to encourage Canadians to develop smaller urban centres, say 10,000 people or so instead of pushing the trend for everyone to move into the city?  The wear and tear on the infrastructure should be considerably less, and hopefully the pace of life would slow down and be less stressful.
> 
> With modern technology, many bureaucratic office jobs no longer need to be done in larger centralized locations. Service jobs are the same whereever they are undertaken.



Cities create less infra demands, not more.  It's much less expensive to service a highrise, for example, that to service two hundred suburban homes.


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## Jed (9 Jan 2013)

You state that Cities need less infrastructure, I assume because of economies of scale, ie: appartment buildings vs sprawling urban homes, etc. I don't by that. 

You can do the same types of building infra in smaller cities and it will work just fine. Less grand transportation infrastructure, power supply, water and sewer etc. I believe, will be environmentally better at a similar cost benefit ratio.


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## a_majoor (19 Jan 2013)

Looks like the quota system has killed an economic development in Kingston. While waiting for the TPP to ptovide cover may be the politically correct way for the government to move against the marketing board regime without expending too much political capital, it is frustrating as hell to be a consumer and shafted by the milk cartel, and I imagine just as frutrating to be in the business, or even a farmer forced to sell their milk for lower prices as animal feed rather than at a premium to this company:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/01/18/terence-corcoran-the-chobani-milk-shakedown/



> *Terence Corcoran: The Chobani milk shakedown
> *
> Terence Corcoran | Jan 18, 2013 8:36 PM ET | Last Updated: Jan 18, 2013 8:51 PM ET
> More from Terence Corcoran | @terencecorcoran
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (21 Jan 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I regularly say that Canada is, in most things, one of the "world's top ten" nations, and, in almost every respect, always in the "top 10%." The _Economist_ agrees in its annual _"Top 10 Countiries in Which to be Born"_ report which is reported upon by _The Telegraph_:
> 
> Top 10:
> 
> ...




And here is an interesting _infographic_ showing the same "best place to born" data from a generation (25 years) ago with 2013:






America, Britain, France _et al_, the old "top tier" have almost all fallen. Canada and Hong Kong stayed in the "top ten" but fell a few place; Sweden and Netherlands also stayed in the top ten but rose in status. Switzerland, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Singapore and New Zealand all climbed up from the "also rans" to replace the USA, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Britain in the top ten.


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## a_majoor (27 Jan 2013)

Want to quickly bouy the economy without increasing government spending? try getting government to follow these recomendations, the amount of money released into the productive economy by eliminating even a large fraction of red tape would be impressive. The NP has been hosting "Red Tape Week" and highlighting other red tape horror stories, so this is well documented:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/01/24/peter-foster-still-strangled-by-red-tape/#more-26544



> *Peter Foster: Still strangled by red tape*
> 
> Peter Foster | Jan 24, 2013 8:03 PM ET | Last Updated: Jan 25, 2013 6:15 PM ET
> More from Peter Foster
> ...


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## a_majoor (31 Jan 2013)

"Ontario: Canada's own Greece" has a nice ring as a tourist slogan, no?

The grave danger is that as Ontario's debt grows and economic situation shrivels, we could end up dragging the rest of Canada down. With the Debt already at or near half the size of the Federal debt, and the possibility of it growing to @ $400 billion by 2017, there is the distinct possibility that Ontario's economic mismanagment could capsize the rest of Canada. Just consider what will happen once the Bond Hawks downgrade Ontario (again) and demand higher risk premiums. What will a market driven spike in interest rates do to the rest of Canada, or even the Bank of Canada's pledge to keep interest rates low?

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/01/31/greece-offers-a-cautionary-tale-fraser-institute-likens-ontario-to-economic-basket-cases-as-provinces-debt-continues-to-climb/



> ‘Greece offers a cautionary tale’: Fraser Institute likens Ontario to economic basket-cases as province’s debt climbs
> 
> Scott Stinson | Jan 31, 2013 2:04 AM ET | Last Updated: Jan 31, 2013 2:09 AM ET
> More from Scott Stinson | @scott_stinson
> ...


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## Dissident (31 Jan 2013)

My limited understanding is that Quebec is the "Greece" of Canada. 
Ontario would be the... France? Spain? Italy? of Canada?

ETA: What do I know anyways.


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## Edward Campbell (2 Feb 2013)

Here is an excellent slide show from _Bloomberg_: http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2013-02-01/50-most-innovative-countries.html#slide1

I like it because it uses several factors to determine _innovation_: R&D intensity, productivity, high-tech density, researcher concentration, manufacturing capability, tertiary efficiency and patent activity.

The US is first, Canada is 17th, ahead of Australia, Italy and the UK, but behind Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. We can, and should, do better with a few _tweaks_ to tax laws and research funding (by government). We need some qualitatively better policies, not more civil servants, to move up, in my *guesstimation*, from 17th to about 12th or even higher. The Government of Canada can and should double, treble even quadruple funds for pure research in five or even 10 Canadian universities; it should allow nearly full tax write offs for *real R&D* (which will be, mostly D) done in Canada by corporations - not a repeat of the failed Conservative and Liberal R&D tax credit schemes of the late 20th century; and it should fund one or two really major, _world class_ R&D efforts, in fields like agriculture and geology - where we have some natural advantages.


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## a_majoor (4 Feb 2013)

More on why Red Tape needs to be eliminated. Notice the huge costs placed on small Canadian business, and the cost differentials between Canada and the United States. Once again, this is the sort of plan that frees up money into the productive economy without any sort of cost to the taxpayer (indeed, by eliminating the red tape and the people who process it, you get a virtuous circle of tax reductions and savings going):

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/02/04/join-the-red-tape-revolution/



> *Join the Red Tape Revolution*
> 
> Dan Kelly | Feb 4, 2013 9:33 AM ET
> More from Dan Kelly
> ...


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## a_majoor (24 Feb 2013)

While the example is from the United States, we hear never ending calls for higher wages for manufacturing industries or higher minimum wages, mostly driven by the same magical thinking. Food for thought next time someone starts off by saying all we need are higher wages....

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/02/20/the-high-wage-fairy/#more-26898



> *The High Wage Fairy*
> 
> Philip Cross, Special to Financial Post | Feb 20, 2013 8:40 PM ET | Last Updated: Feb 20, 2013 8:57 PM ET
> More from Special to Financial Post
> ...



Of course the highlighted line also reinforces a point that Edward makes in this thread that Canadian productivity is quite low compared to our competition; fix _that_ and we will see wages rise as well.


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## a_majoor (26 Feb 2013)

This sort of thinking defines why we have economic issues (or don't know how to fix them):

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/02/25/the-logic-cliff/#more-26947



> *The logic cliff*
> 
> Philip Cross, Special to Financial Post | Feb 25, 2013 9:24 PM ET | Last Updated: Feb 25, 2013 9:29 PM ET
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (4 Mar 2013)

A guide for would be businesspeople looking to do startups in Canada:

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/03/04/how-to-start-a-business-without-any-money-because-in-canada-you-have-to/



> *How to start a business without any money — because in Canada you have to*
> 
> Danny Bradbury, Special to Financial Post | 13/03/04 | Last Updated: 13/03/04 3:32 PM ET
> More from Special to Financial Post
> ...


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## a_majoor (8 Mar 2013)

This article is no surprise to anyone who paid attention to economic history, or was awake during the Reagan Revolution in the US or the "Common Sense Revolution" in Ontario. The sad part is that it will be a surprise to may people, and will be considered contentious or wrong by many others (despite the evidence of history):

http://washingtonexaminer.com/michael-barone-spending-cuts-may-be-answer-to-slow-economic-growth/article/2523344



> *Michael Barone: Spending cuts may be answer to slow economic growth*
> March 5, 2013 | 8:00 pm
> 
> Michael Barone
> ...


----------



## 57Chevy (10 Mar 2013)

If the National Capital Region was tranformed into a District like the US District of Columbia,
would it make Canada more relevant ?

Would it make any difference ?

There has been proposals to do so in the past but none have come close to being passed.

Thoughts ?


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## a_majoor (11 Mar 2013)

Not sure if Ottawa is large enough to stand on its own, but there have been various proposals floated about having Toronto (and sometimes Vancouver) turned into "City States" with powers simlar to provinces. For various reasons I think cities like Toronto or Vancouver (in the Canadian cotext) would be better off with their municipal governments tightly constrained to their roles and having a far _reduced_ presence, rather than growing their powers.

The reasons for having Washington DC as a separate entity has more to do with American history and politics than anything else.


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## Colin Parkinson (13 Mar 2013)

Vancouver is only now grappling with a beast of it's own making, called Translink. All of the municipalities here are addicted to the tax base based on over inflated property values. Lot's of news articles on this, but the one thing I see that no one talks about is that cost of servicing a mortgage here is about 75-100% of a person salary. 

As a regulator in the Federal Service I see ideas put forward by businesses that are just plain dumb, or they have such tunnel vision that they have no concept of the effect their idea will have on others. Personally I believe that a significant part of a regulators job is to get proponents to pull their heads out of the box and look around. I don't always blame the proponent for the tunnel vision, some projects suck up so much time and energy it's far to easy for them to get stuck in a deep rut and not notice things outside of what's directly in front of them.
Also notice that business both big and small are quiet on the cost of cleaning up failed business ventures or on depleted resource sites. Unless of course they can get a juicy contract out of it. I see business and regulators as a Yin-Yang thing. Governments need business to succeed to create the taxbase needed to support Government and it's services. The regulator is there to protect the interests of the taxpayer/public and to ensure the business fulfills it's obligations. The balance between the 2 needs is always dynamic. As businesses get greedy or sloppy, government creates regulations and hires people to enforce them till it slows business down to much, then business ascends as regulation reduces, till things go wrong and then the cycle repeats.


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## a_majoor (13 Mar 2013)

Vancouver is only reaping what it ghas sown.

Right here in London, we have plenty of "investments" made with the taxpayers dollars which can only continue to exist with infusions of new tax money (and the local politicians wonder why London's nemployment rate is 9.1%). I don't see too much effort by the local politicans to "clean up" their failed "investments". OTOH, local politcians have abandoned infrastructure since @ 2000 (when London City Council voted to host the Canda Summer Games and blew millions to bring the games to the city); the City Engineer has been quoted as saying he needs $30 million/year to keep up with maintainence issues, but Council votes $8 million/year. The estimated cost to repair/replace decaying infrastructure in 2006 was about 1 billion dollars.

These are not really unique to London, I just happen to know the dates and figures better than other Canadian cities.

So when I say the city governmetn sould be tightly controlled and have less presence, I mean they should only have the ability to do infrastructure and protective services, and let local business decide if building convention centers, downtown arenas and hosting events make economic sense. (Hint, if these things were good ideas, they would have already been done...)


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## Edward Campbell (18 Mar 2013)

The _Globe and Mail_ has published a fascinating interactive graphic showing Canada's current debt load:

Federal = $582 Billion
Ontario = $236 Billion
Quebec = $167 Billion
BC        = $  36 Billion
*TOTAL = $999 Billion + (which includes Alberta's $16 Billion 'surplus' in the Heritage Fund
*


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## Edward Campbell (19 Mar 2013)

Regular readers of this page will know that I take note of various indices like "transparency" and "competitiveness" and so on. I noted, without too much interest, that Canada fell to 11th place on the UN's _Human Development Index_ (the thing about which Prime Minister Chrétien used to brag so much, in the 1990s, when we were often No. 1). There is a reason that we fell five full places this year and it has to do with what is measured and how - especially _national_ pre-school and daycare programmes - not how "developed" we are. This is explained in an article by Carleton University Professor Frances Woolley in today's _Globe and Mail_.

Of course the same thing applies to those indices to which I do pay attention: change the reporting system and our "place" will change, too.


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## a_majoor (22 Mar 2013)

The new federal budget may be disappointing for hard core Conservatives/Libertarians, but from a political POV it is probably about as good as it gets. This article suggests why solutions that seem so sensible and common sense to you or I are not being implemented by the political class:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/20/why-the-logical-response-to-a-financial-crisis-almost-never-happens.html



> *Why the Logical Response to a Financial Crisis Almost Never Happens*
> by Megan McArdle Mar 20, 2013 7:50 AM EDT
> Forget the technocratic analysis. Is it politically palatable?
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (24 Mar 2013)

Conrad Black on the meta reason behind the global crisis. If he is right, then the solution would be to end the reign of fiat currency, with the very painful period of adjustments that would bring:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/03/23/conrad-black-the-economics-of-bubbles-in-cyprus-and-here-at-home/



> *Conrad Black: The economics of bubbles, in Cyprus and here at home*
> Republish Reprint
> 
> Conrad Black | 13/03/23 | Last Updated: 13/03/22 5:21 PM ET
> ...


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## a_majoor (27 Mar 2013)

While this can be catagorized as "good news", it is really far too little to energize the economy or provide enough freed resources to allow individuals to tackle the personal debt load. I would encourage politicians everywhere to continue the trend (but suspect that spendthrift provincial politicians will invade the space cleared by lower Federal taxation to seize more money rather than tackle their spending problems):

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/26/tax-burden-on-canadians-up-slightly-in-last-three-years-but-down-overall-since-2007-report/



> *Tax burden on Canadians up slightly in last three years but down overall since 2007: report*
> 
> Michael Woods, Postmedia News | 13/03/26 | Last Updated: 13/03/26 10:20 PM ET
> More from Postmedia News
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (27 Mar 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Some provocative thoughts on pipelines, petroleum and politics from Vancouver author Vivian Krause in an article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Post_:
> 
> http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/28/vivian-krause-u-s-greens-shut-down-canadian-oil/
> 
> This has a bit of a _conspiracy theory_ whiff about it but it's hard to argue with her numbers.




And more on pipelines in this thoughtful article by long-time Liberal insider Gordon Gibson which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/canada-might-well-benefit-from-keystones-rejection/article10374471/


> Canada might well benefit from Keystone’s rejection
> 
> GORDON GIBSON
> Special to The Globe and Mail
> ...




I agree with Gibson: if the Americans want to cut off their nose to spute their face that's their business ~ regardless of the fate of _Keystone XL_ we, Canada, need to get our own, Canadian oil to our own, Canadian seaports for global exports.


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## Kirkhill (28 Mar 2013)

> The B.C. government has received a study saying this is viable. What remains is getting the crude to the coast. In extremis, it could come by existing rail at a tolerable cost. More desirably, the federal government could reverse its disgraceful lack of attention to aboriginal claims, the major barrier to the northern pipeline.



I think this may be seen in terms of Harper's "notorious" incrementalism.  Especially with respect to the native land claims issue.

After the public hearings are complete the government then has a catalogue of every conceivable complaint known to man.  The easy ones to address are those demanding a technical solution.  The harder ones are the BC Government, the environmentalists and the natives.   The environmentalists were and are never going to be appeased.  Short of every Albertan committing seppuku the enviromentalists will always demand less.

The BC government ..... well that is a straight bazaar trade.  Jobs and Dollars.

The native issue has always been the fly in the ointment.  Are the natives autonomous, wards of the HBC, BC or the Feds?  That is the unresolved question in BC.  The Federal government has come to terms with the predominantly native communities  of the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.  The natives are now keen to assist in exploiting the resources and permitting the passage of pipelines.  The prairie tribes have been accomodated to various degrees.

BC remains the flashpoint for the native debate.  

I wonder what would happen if there were an autonomous Northern BC?  Or if Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal were granted provincial status?
That won't happen.  I don't think.

But.....some degree of funding and native autonomy will likely pave the way for the pipeline.  And if a government funded refinery is the cost of breaking the log jam, well that isn't all bad.


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## foresterab (28 Mar 2013)

It is interesting looking at the BC situation...the NE oil and gas producing part of BC is covered "mostly" by Treaty 8.  Several of the coastal groups have settled as well.  But in the interior many of the claims are held up by courts and are complicated as groups claim overlapping areas of interest...it's why land claim areas exceed physical area. 

From dealing with First Nation groups in northern Alberta one of the major concerns is the social upheaval that occurs when a large, well paying, boom industry - in this case pipeline construction - comes rolling into town and proceeds to suck up the willing workforce.  Some of that workforce, especially younger workers, then get caught in the "good times will never end" cycle and fall into drugs/alchohol/debt issues that force them to work until they self destruct.  This is not just an aboriginal issue but occurs in any community that has not experienced it before..if you're 16 and making $80,000/yr driving water truck or 18 and making 6 digits as a laborer family and community are not most peoples focus.  

A better solution that I have seen done with projects is instead of hiring bodies and bringing in the speciality laborers/trades etc. is to start the discussion off the top...if this goes ahead we are going to need the following workforce....   From those talks companies have put aside a relatively small pool of monies to assist paying for new welders/electricians/instrumentation techs etc. on the premise that the community/First Nation choose quality candidates to become part of the workforce.  The new apprentacies/journeymen (depending on time) then are hired on as part of the labor force for the project but leaves a full trained person in the community behind them.  Laborers are easy(ish) to find...it's the trades where things count.   The other advantage of this is that it gives some First Nations role models where "there is Joe..he supervises white guys" as a welder/electrician/etc..and the race issue becomes less of a hinderance as the success of "Joe" proves that hard work is respected.

Lastly there is the issue of connection with the area.  When I worked in Northern BC we ran into several road blocks...working for a local lumber mill we were waved right through when the oil and gas guys were stuck waiting.  When they asked why they got told "the lumber mill is taking the resource but putting it back and is here for a long term plan..you're just here to get in and out".  That mentality is tough to change without long term infrastructure needed to support more than just the development of a project...you need the maintaince contracts, the repair shops, the monitoring contracts to be talked about as much or more than the initial pipeline.   Unfortunately as the drilling is usually in different departments than the pipelines which is different than the maintaince it is rare for any oil and gas company to talk all three phases and impacts at once.


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## Kirkhill (28 Mar 2013)

foresterab said:
			
		

> ...if you're 16 and making $80,000/yr driving water truck or 18 and making 6 digits as a laborer family and community are not most peoples focus.



Equally true of Norwegian deckhands working in Seattle..... I know of at least one of them who now owns a good chunk of the international marine industry.

Having said that I see your other points.


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## a_majoor (28 Mar 2013)

Well Duh! Add up the transfers of wealth from taxpayers to the various cronies and clients and you have one very large answer as to why Canada is not performing to its full potential; too much cash is being siphoned from the productive sector and resources cannot be efficiently allocated to where they get the best return (unless your measure of ROI is votes rather than profits, of course):

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/03/28/canadas-corporate-welfare-budget/



> *Canada's corporate welfare budget*
> Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tables the federal budget in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday March 21, 2013.
> 
> If there was a theme in the recent federal budget, it was how chock full it was with new corporate welfare. The underlying refrain was how big government will help big business with your tax dollars.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (30 Mar 2013)

Conrad Black has some ideas - most of them flawed - in this column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/03/30/conrad-black-raising-canada-up-while-beating-inflation-down/


> Raising Canada up, while beating inflation down
> 
> Conrad Black
> 
> ...




Black is correct in say that we have _"the sinews of an important country, but the habits of an American satellite"_. We do so because we are, already, an important country but we are, by geopolitical circumstance, also an American satellite - and partially, by coice, too.

Black's economic solutions are too tricky by half. Good fiscal policy is simple and clear - slicing and dicing a consumption tax is neither. I agree that we should reduce corporate and capital gains taxes to zero - for reasons i have outlined several times - but most canadians oppose such moves so they are unlikely to happen. I also agree that we should reduce the income tax - especially for the lowest paid third of the population. But we need revenue. My answer, mt personal preference, is a Green Tax, a carbon tax which is paid, like the HST/GST by you and me - meaning it _flows through_ all the corporate and intermediate levels with only a minor bookkeeping burden attached - whenever we start our car, turn up the heat in winter (or the AC in summer) and watch our big screen TV.


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## a_majoor (30 Mar 2013)

I don't agree with most of Lord Blacks suggestions either, but at least he is speaking to the issues (unlike most politicians) and offering ideas. Too bad we don't have many more Canadians engaging on these issues.


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## a_majoor (2 Apr 2013)

ERC has written on this subject many times, here is a powerful argument to reinforce the point that Free Trade will be a powerful tool to increase our productivity and standard of living:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/04/01/a-better-trade-strategy/#more-27378



> *A better trade strategy*
> 
> Michael Hart, Special to Financial Post | 13/04/01 | Last Updated: 13/04/01 8:30 PM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (5 Apr 2013)

Andrew Coyne on the dangers of Sovereign Wealth Funds like the Alberta Heritage fund. I absolutely agree that haviing thousands or millions of small accounts spread over thousands or tens of thousands of different investment opportunities provides greater breadth and depth to an economy than centralizing the investment pool (and this also makes the economy more resistent to shocks and "black swan" events). Sadly, the attractiveness of having a huge resource pool to reward followers and punish opponents is the key reason for politicians to advocate for such concentrations of funds, so unless there is a concerted effort by voters to change things, there will be no changes:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/04/05/andrew-coyne-governments-aim-to-keep-surplus-energy-revenues-from-hands-of-vulgar-public/



> *Andrew Coyne: Governments aim to keep surplus energy revenues from hands of vulgar public*
> 
> Republish Reprint
> Andrew Coyne | 13/04/05 9:03 PM ET
> ...


----------



## CougarKing (9 Apr 2013)

More from Aussie ex-PM Kevin Rudd: taking another page from Australia's book on how to deal with Asia...



> *Don Cayo: Lessons from Australia on how to increase trade with Asia
> Investment in education and technology pays off for businesses Down Under*
> 
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (13 Apr 2013)

Today's FP has some of the externalities that hamper Canadian business and stilfe productivity and raise costs to consumers. As should be expected, much of it has to do with "regulatory failure"; intrusions into the marketplace which have to be absorbed by business and either eaten as reduced profitability or passed on to consumers (guess which is the more common solution?). The low population density argument simply means that the costs are spread over a smaller number of people (similar costs in the united states are spread over a population of 300 million, so each individual consumer is dinged 1/10 the amount that a Canadian pays for particular regulations, tarrifs or taxes).

Much more room to improve:

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/04/12/why-canadians-may-never-realize-their-dream-of-having-u-s-prices/



> *Why Canadians may never realize their dream of having U.S. prices*
> 
> Dan Ovsey | 13/04/12 | Last Updated: 13/04/12 6:00 PM ET
> More from Dan Ovsey | @DanOvsey
> ...


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## a_majoor (16 Apr 2013)

While this is a US example, Ontario and Quebec are running monster deficits and debts, and many other provinces are close behind, so the lessons are relevant to us as well:

http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/04/11/gillespieondebtandspending



> *5 Unacknowledged, Unexpected, and Unavoidable Facts about Govt Spending and the Economy*
> Nick Gillespie & Todd Krainin | April 11, 2013
> 
> “Politicians are like criminals in Batman comics. They’re a superstitious, cowardly lot. And the minute that they know they’re going to lose elections because they’re spending too much money, they will find their inner cheapskate and start [spending less],” said Reason's Nick Gillespie during his speech at the Reason Weekend event in Las Vegas.
> ...


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## foresterab (18 Apr 2013)

http://gold.globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GAM/20130418/RBCROWLEYCOLUMN0417ATL/stocks/news?back_url=yes
From today's Globe and Mail

Unemployment is not Canada's problem
BRIAN LEE CROWLEY
00:00 EST Thursday, Apr 18, 2013
  

Brian Lee Crowley is the managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an independent non-partisan public policy think tank in Ottawa. 

The king is dead. Long live the king - of statistics that is.

For the past 50 years, the king of economic statistics, the one awaited each month with bated breath by finance ministers, central bank governors, pundits and the general public alike, was the unemployment rate. A rising rate was political poison, a falling one grounds for governmental preening.

But those still focused on the unemployment rate as the prime barometer of the health of the Canadian economy and the prospects of individual workers probably still call recorded music "tapes" and are stubbornly waiting for the slide-rule industry to recover from its slump.

Today the statistic whose entrails we should be earnestly scrutinizing each month is the job vacancy rate. The success or failure in bringing down this crucial economic barometer will matter more than any other single measure in understanding whether we have the policy mix right.

The reason for this revolution in statistical significance is not hard to spot: Canada had the largest baby-boom generation relative to base population in the Western world, 50 per cent larger than the next closest, that of the United States.

As a result of this tsunami of workers, the Canadian labour force grew more than 200 per cent over the past 50 years. The chief economic challenge was where to put all these workers. We did pretty well, all things considered, in getting them into work, but the numbers were so overwhelming that even in the face of strong employment growth, we still ended up with big unemployment numbers. How quickly people forget that in the 1980s, Canada went through an entire decade where unemployment was never less than double digits. Even in the trough of the recent recession we avoided that fate.

But that speaks to how radically the retreat of the boomers is reshaping the economy. Over the next 50 years we can expect the number of workers to rise by a relatively paltry 11 per cent as the boomer bulge moves into retirement.

Consider, for example, that if past recessions are anything to go by, at this stage of the recovery Canada should still be struggling with double-digit unemployment and lagging the U.S. job market recovery.

Instead, Canada was the first major Western industrial economy to recover all the jobs lost in the recession, and remains streets ahead of the U.S. The headline unemployment rates are misleading because Washington measures unemployment better than Canada does. If Canada used the U.S. measure, the unemployment rate would fall to around 6.3 per cent. Bear in mind that the U.S. Federal Reserve has said it will start to raise interest rates when U.S. unemployment falls to 6.5 per cent. Canada has already passed that milestone, with a higher share of its population working than any other Group of Seven country.

Canadian statistics are further distorted because of two narrow groups, young people and immigrants, whose unemployment greatly exceeds the national rate. If they are excluded, the national rate is in the low 5-per-cent range. In other words, the problem is not on the demand side; there is ample demand for labour. Canada no longer needs general stimulus to soak up unemployment; it needs targeted programs to help pull a few outlier groups into the economic mainstream.

Also, the jobs that have been created are not of the "fries-with-that" drudgery of popular lore. Since the recession, the vast bulk of new employment in Canada has been in full-time above-average-wage work. Because of the boomer ebb tide this is no accident or unrepresentative moment. This is the new normal. Labour markets are tightening across the country, explaining the largely unremarked 3-per-cent rise in real wages in the past year, near the peak experienced during the pre-recession resource boom, and business groups constantly single out labour shortages as a huge headache.

Which brings us to the job vacancy rate. Little noticed in the recent federal budget was Ottawa's estimate that the number of jobs going unfilled is several times higher it was just a few years ago and is rising fast. In other words, the low level of unemployment is increasingly matched by rising job vacancies.

That is a red-hot labour market, with Canada's economic prospects held back because employers cannot find the right workers with the right skills to help the economy create the greatest wealth for Canadians. Memo to policy makers: Unemployment isn't the problem. Squeeze the vacancy rate if you want to make Canadians better off.



Working in the resource sector and living in a town dominated by trades alot of this makes sense locally...2 months to book a plumber, 3 months for an electrian, 3 weeks for a mechanic if they want the work.  At the same time there is a missmatch in skills where select professions do very well (instrumentation tech. ususally starts at 6 figures locally following journeyman status/millwright etc.) and some do not (hairdressers make $15/hr...Tim Hortons offers $12/hr) so for those lacking the right skill set work is tough to find compounded by alternate employment not matching cost of living....hence many temporary foriegn workers.    It is also not a national problem as traveling around Canada I am constantly amazed at the differences in employement rates/wages/options provided .  But it does speak to part of the issue facing the Canadian economy.


----------



## a_majoor (25 Apr 2013)

Alberta is considering a general sales tax. While the author of this post is entirely correct, the real issue is that the Government of Alberta has a huge spending problem, and will most likely NOT substitute a general sales tax for a business tax or income tax, but rather continue collecting existing taxes and apply the new tax as well. This will take a nasty bite out of the Alberta economy (and as consumption and investment falls, the Government will discover, like so many others, that their tax revenues will fall as well).

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/04/24/progressive-taxes-arent/



> *When progressive taxes aren’t*
> Jack M. Mintz | 13/04/24 | Last Updated: 13/04/24 3:58 PM ET
> More from Jack M. Mintz
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (26 Apr 2013)

An interesting exercise in comparative analysis. SpaceX builds and operates rockets, and launches satellites into orbit, as well as capsules of supplies to the ISS (and returns the capsules to Earth, rather than burn them up in the atmosphere). So we have established that SpaceX has some very high performance objectives to meet (the laws of physics are enforced at all times and places). SpaceX also charges far less on its website for launches into orbit than the listed prices competators like Lockheed-Martin, or even foreign entities like the ESA or the Chinese "Long March" launchers.

PErhaps if cost analysis for government programs was done the way SpaceX did, we might see big savings without the reduction of actual services or outputs (analogous to the rocket hardware SpaceX produces: if they cut corners in the actual product, we would see rockets exploding on the pad or in flight). Now SpaceX is a for profit company, so there cannot be a one to one correspondence between a government department and SpaceX, but I am willing to suggest there are broad areas where the SpaceX methodology would apply and deliver cost savings:

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/what_spacex_can_teach_us_about.html



> *What SpaceX Can Teach Us About Cost Innovation*
> by Tom Agan  |  10:37 AM April 25, 2013
> Comments (3)
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (7 May 2013)

I support this move if, but *only IF* it is accompanied by years and years of big, Big, BIG pure research grants to the universities, starting with tens of millions of new dollars and rising to hundreds of millions of new dollars per year, year after year and decade after decade. The split - "pure" research in universities and "applied" research in the NRC - is appropriate when we have adequate support for university research in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.

I suspect I will be sadly disappointed.


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## GR66 (7 May 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I support this move if, but *only IF* it is accompanied by years and years of big, Big, BIG pure research grants to the universities, starting with tens of millions of new dollars and rising to hundreds of millions of new dollars per year, year after year and decade after decade. The split - "pure" research in universities and "applied" research in the NRC - is appropriate when we have adequate support for university research in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.
> 
> I suspect I will be sadly disappointed.



Agree.  Both with your prescription and your expectations (unfortunately).  It is very important to create a better path from basic scientific discoveries to practical applications that can be used by Canadian businesses.  However I would suggest that those really dramatic breakthroughs are rarely "planned" developments but rather pleasant "surprises" that transform the way we live and work.  For that reason basic scientific research...not just targeted scientific research is a must if we want to be a technology leader.


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## GAP (7 May 2013)

I disagree.... Why would it be government's responsibility to fund private enterprise research?

Because it won't get done otherwise? 

It's not getting done now and how many millions/billions is government in all it's forms contributing? 

If business does not have the get and go to innovate, then fail....the cream will eventually rise to the top.

 :2c:


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## Edward Campbell (10 May 2013)

GAP said:
			
		

> I disagree.... Why would it be government's responsibility to fund private enterprise research?
> 
> Because it won't get done otherwise?
> 
> ...




Actually, the research *will* get done ~ and about 85%+ of it (pure research) will get done thanks to government funding. The biggest research fund provider is the US government, largely through the defence budget. The country that pays for research tends to reap many benefits: its universities attract more and better researchers who, in their turn, produce more "outputs" that have eventual _development_ possibilities. This is a major driver of _productivity_. The countries, like Canada, that are stingy with research funding attract fewer and fewer talented people and see - as we have for many decades - see lower and lower levels of productivity. 

Productivity is, mainly, a management issue - and Canada has, traditionally, nurtured timid managers - but there is one place where government can make a positive contribution: research. *Not* "research and development," because development is and ought to be a commercial enterprise - government cannot, because they don't know how to "pick winners." But pure research is _neutral_ and it has many peripheral benefits even when it doesn't appear to lead anywhere in particular.


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## Edward Campbell (10 May 2013)

_Stimulus_, in the Keynesian model, ought to be provide almost solely through physical infrastructure projects. Social spending does not create jobs that provide economic "flow through." While some, moderately generous levels of social spending are desirable, even necessary, it is all 'wasted."

But infrastructure spending is hard to crank up, as this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, illustrates: 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/rob-insight/badly-needed-infrastructure-stimulus-hobbled-by-the-butterfly-effect/article11836961/#dashboard/follows/


> Badly needed infrastructure stimulus hobbled by the butterfly effect
> 
> SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
> 
> ...




Despite being wasteful and, therefore, _depressive_ rather than stimulating, social spending is much more popular with politicians because it attracts relatively little opposition and is easy to implement. But we need a national infrastructure programme with a considerable investment in ongoing, never ending _maintenance_. But that will require a much, much better quality of political leadership: brave, as Sean Silcoff suggests, and smart.

But this is Canada, so ...


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## Kirkhill (10 May 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> *Not* "research and development," because development is and ought to be a commercial enterprise - government cannot, because they don't know how to "pick winners." But pure research is _neutral_ and it has many peripheral benefits even when it doesn't appear to lead anywhere in particular.



Couldn't agree more.

Negative results from research should be considered equally as important as positive results.  Also, unintended results are often far more interesting, and exploitable, than intended results.

Rumsfeld's knowns - the unintended results give clues to the unknown unknowns.


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## Edward Campbell (11 May 2013)

Well, Al Bore Gore was here telling us that unless we stop digging oil out of the sands the world will end ...






The _Globe and Mail's_ Brian Gable gets it right: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/ethical-aviation-fuel/article11638060/#dashboard/follows/


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## Edward Campbell (23 May 2013)

A useful reminder that Canada is, broadly and generally, on the right track in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/departing-carney-reminds-us-why-canada-works/article12074289/#dashboard/follows/


> Departing Carney reminds us why ‘Canada works’
> 
> KONRAD YAKABUSKI
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




It is possible, of course, to "screw it all up," and there are even some provincial premiers, like Pauline Marois, who are actively trying to do that, but I think Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty, Stephen Poloz, Kathy Dunderdale, Kathleen Wynne, Brad Wall, Allison Redford and Christy Clark are _sound_ enough people to pull together to avoid the worst.


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## Edward Campbell (23 May 2013)

Interesting graphic from the _Pew Research Centre_ illustrating levels of confidence in the economy:






The percentage who say their national economy is "good:" China=88%, Philippines=68%, *Canada=67%*, US=33%, and France=9%.

(Thanks to Roland Paris, at _uOttawa_ (but currently a visiting prof at _Sciences Po Paris_ for this chart.)


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## Edward Campbell (4 Jun 2013)

I have remarked, several times, that even if Canada is not really one of the G7, if we're talking GDP, or even one of the "top ten" we remain one of the "top ten percents" - which is a nice way of saying"top twenty."

There is an interesting article in _The Atlantic_ which is headlined: Emerging Power: Developing Nations Now Claim the Majority of World GDP. That's not really news but the article is accompanied by a useful graphic that illustrates the changes in the "top ten:"







You can, clearly, see the _*relative*_ decline of America and rise of China but it is important that, by other measures, like GDP per capita, while China's _rise_ is very real America's decline is not.


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## Edward Campbell (6 Jun 2013)

I think, based upon his "opening statement" reported in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, that I'm going to like Stephen Poloz:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/bank-of-canada-governor-stephen-poloz-says-global-recovery-like-postwar-reconstruction/article12377774/#dashboard/follows/


> Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz says global recovery like ‘postwar reconstruction’
> 
> KEVIN CARMICHAEL
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




Here, also reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Bank of Canada's_ website, is the full text of his statement:

http://www.bankofcanada.ca/2013/06/speeches/opening-statement-06-06-13/


> Opening Statement - Stephen S. Poloz
> Governor of the Bank of Canada
> *Presented to: House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance
> Ottawa, Ontario*
> ...




I am very happy that he sees *inflation* - and the bank's inflation range target - as "sacrosanct." I am equally happy to know that he shares he view that exchange rates have a limited impact (but some, to be sure) on productivity. A good start in my view.


Edit: format


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## Brad Sallows (6 Jun 2013)

>The percentage who say their national economy is "good:"

The transition from dog to beef exerts strong positive emotions.  When you are lower on the diminishing returns curve, a smaller change in "x" gets you more "y", and hence more satisfaction.


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## Edward Campbell (17 Jun 2013)

Here is an interesting article, co-authored by Edmund S. Phelps which, if for no reason other than the credentials of its co-author, deserves a read. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Project Syndicate_:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/blaming-capitalism-for-corporatism


> Blaming Capitalism for Corporatism
> 
> Saifedean Ammous and Edmund S. Phelps
> 
> ...




This is not exactly new - our colleague Thucydides rails against "crony capitalism" - but it is rare to see the consequences of _corporatism_ so clearly defined:

     [o]Dysfunctional corporations that survive despite their gross inability to serve their customers;

     [o]Sclerotic economies with slow output growth;

     [o]A dearth of engaging work;

     [o]Scant opportunities for young people;

     [o]Governments bankrupted by their efforts to palliate these problems; and

     [o]Increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of those connected enough to be on the right side of the corporatist deal.

That is a pretty fair description of many most developed economies.

What can be done?

     1. Stop believing that anything is "too big to fail;"

     2. Stop supporting David Lewis' "_Corporate Welfare Bums_;" but

     3. For 1 & 2 to happen citizens have to grow some B&B (balls and brains) and elect governments that will "do the right things and do things right."


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## Edward Campbell (21 Jun 2013)

Paul Krugman is a great economist, the fact that I disagree with him on many issues does not, not even in the slightest, diminish his stature. But he is, also, a nearly obsessive Obama cheerleader and he "sees" the roots of the financial crisis solely in terms of mistakes and missteps by Republican presidents and Republican congressional leaders and businessmen who must be Republicans, too. Thus it was not surprising to read, a while back, that he felt that Canada was too _Republican_ and that our policies and leadership would spell our doom. To be fair he was not and is not alone; several economists are betting against Canada. But some, including TD Bank's Diana Petramala beg to differ, as explained in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_: 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/td-bank-to-paul-krugman-youre-wrong-about-canada/article12722261/#dashboard/follows/


> TD Bank to Paul Krugman: You’re wrong about 'vulnerable' Canada
> 
> MICHAEL BABAD
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




Frankly and, I think, fairly, I think Ms. Petramala's view is both better informed and more carefully reasoned and, therefore, more likely to be correct.


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## Edward Campbell (23 Jun 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I have been reading about and watching/listen to report of the "Occupy" _movements_ (I don't think it's one, monolithic 'thing,' yet) with careful albeit not rapt attention. A few observations:
> 
> 1. Inequality, growing inequality, is both real and problematical;
> 
> ...




And here, at last, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _New York Times_, is a sensible explanation of the real crux of the _inequality_ problem ~ it stifles _socio-economic_ mobility which is not only a attribute of successful societies, I would argue it is a requirement:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/we-were-middle-class-once-and-young/?_r=1&


> We Were Middle-Class Once, And Young
> 
> Paul Krugman
> 
> ...




I think we are all familiar with the "rags to riches to rags" cycle in e.g. English history - one or two generations raise a family from nothing to riches, another one or two generations maintain that status and then another generation or two spend it all and reduce the family back to nothing. There is a pithy saying in Chinese that tells the same story in fewer words. We have, across humanity, a common view of socio-economic mobility and, also, a common _sense_ that it is a good thing. What worries Krugman ~ and should worry us all ~ is that our "system" appears to be making socio-economic mobility harder to achieve. That Canada is somewhat less ossified than America is not a cause for celebration.


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## a_majoor (23 Jun 2013)

Interesting take on the debt loads of Ontario and Quebec. Bond rating agencies seem to elieve they have unlimited power to tax and borrow, without suffering any adverse consequences for doing so. The economic decline of Ontario from "have" to "have not" status, unemployment figures and economic growth statistics would seem to argue against that POV, and as the author poits out, at some point the taxpayers will have been pushed too far. While a "Tea Party" type movement may not be in the cards, taxpayers "Going Galt" and leaving the jurisdiction or foregoing opportunities to earn/spend more will leave a gaping hole in economic forecasts, and I doubt anyone can create a way to tax people on their theoretical earning potential if they are downsizing.

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/06/17/terence-corcoran-time-for-a-tax-revolt-in-ontario-quebec/



> *Terence Corcoran: Time for a tax revolt in Ontario, Quebec*
> 
> Terence Corcoran | 13/06/17 | Last Updated: 13/06/18 11:43 AM ET
> More from Terence Corcoran | @terencecorcoran
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (27 Jun 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> And more on pipelines in this thoughtful article by long-time Liberal insider Gordon Gibson which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/canada-might-well-benefit-from-keystones-rejection/article10374471/
> 
> I agree with Gibson: if the Americans want to cut off their nose to spute their face that's their business ~ regardless of the fate of _Keystone XL_ we, Canada, need to get our own, Canadian oil to our own, Canadian seaports for global exports.




I think we, Canada, need to get our petroleum to the global markets no matter what Americans, our own Canadian aboriginals or the children of the _Occupy ______ movement think. But this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_, notes, Canadian _first nations_ and _Occupy ______ - both of which are, as Thucydides and others have reminded us, are financed by big American foundations with ties to their energy sector - have joined forces to slow/stop that process:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/06/26/john-ivison-occupy-and-idle-no-more-could-team-up-to-block-pipelines-going-east/


> Occupy and Idle No More could team up to block pipelines going east
> 
> John Ivison
> 
> ...




I have a lot of sympathy for first nations, in general. As our own Supreme Court has reminded us, we, Canadians over the generations, have treated them poorly unfairly and dishonestly, but the redress to their real grievances will require cooperation, not confrontation, on both sides.

I have no sympathy for _Occupy ______. While I agree that _inequality_ is a problem, _Occupy ______ does not really understand what _inequality_ is all about, nor does it care. _Occupy _____ are all spoiled children of the middle class: too lazy (and ill educated) to work and too nervous to steal. A little taste of real communism - forced labour in harsh regions - would help them to grow up.


Edit: typo


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## Edward Campbell (28 Jun 2013)

The truth about how we assess/analyse President Obama's musings about the _Keystone XL_ pipeline, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Ottawa Citizen_:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/editorial-cartoons/index.html




MacKay, _Hamilton Spectator_


----------



## a_majoor (28 Jun 2013)

While this s an American example we have no reason to feel smug. Canada's Federal government has $500 billion in unfunded liabilities (mostly government pensions), which is the same order of magnitude as the National Debt. While I have been searching, similar figures are not present for the Provinces and municipalities, although since few polities use the same format for their finacial reportings, it is hard to say what is going on. If anyone has reasonably up to date figures for Provincial and Municipal unfunded liabilites, I would be interested to see them. As you can see from the American examples, the consequences of unfunded liabilities can be even more extreme than public debt (and the combined impact is pretty much insoluable in the worst cases).

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/06/27/ten-states-now-buried-by-pensions/



> *Ten States Now Buried by Pensions*
> 
> There are currently ten states whose pension liabilities are higher than total yearly revenues, according to a new Moody’s report on public pensions. The states in question included Colorado, Kentucky, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Connecticut. Worst of all was Illinois, where pension liabilities are more than twice as high as revenues. As Reuters reports, the culprit is the same in all cases:
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (7 Jul 2013)

This proposal, which is in an article that is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, _might_, as the author suggests, be a neat way for Canada to "steal a march on the U.S."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/streetwise/why-a-yuan-hub-makes-sense-for-toronto/article13038256/#dashboard/follows/


> Why a yuan hub makes sense for Toronto
> 
> SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
> 
> ...


----------



## DBA (8 Jul 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Actually, the research *will* get done ~ and about 85%+ of it (pure research) will get done thanks to government funding. The biggest research fund provider is the US government, largely through the defence budget. The country that pays for research tends to reap many benefits: its universities attract more and better researchers who, in their turn, produce more "outputs" that have eventual _development_ possibilities. This is a major driver of _productivity_. The countries, like Canada, that are stingy with research funding attract fewer and fewer talented people and see - as we have for many decades - see lower and lower levels of productivity.
> 
> Productivity is, mainly, a management issue - and Canada has, traditionally, nurtured timid managers - but there is one place where government can make a positive contribution: research. *Not* "research and development," because development is and ought to be a commercial enterprise - government cannot, because they don't know how to "pick winners." But pure research is _neutral_ and it has many peripheral benefits even when it doesn't appear to lead anywhere in particular.



The NRC has always had an industry and agricultural focus. This focus was strengthen not created in 2013.  An excerpt from the NRC Act 1985:



> (c) undertake, assist or promote scientific and industrial research, including, without restricting the generality of the foregoing,
> 
> (i) the utilization of the natural resources of Canada,
> 
> ...


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## foresterab (18 Jul 2013)

An interesting gamble by a town....

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2013/07/17/technology-gigabit-internet-olds.html

Small Alta. town gets massive 1,000 Mbps broadband boost
Rural community of Olds builds its own fibre network and starts its own ISP
By Emily Chung, CBC News Posted: Jul 18, 2013 12:45 PM MT Last Updated: Jul 18, 2013 2:11 PM MT   
 Olds is a rural community of 8,500 people about 80 kilometres north of Calgary. (Courtesy Olds Institute for Community and Regional Development) Related
Related Stories
Ultrafast internet service launched by Vancouver startup
INTERACTIVE | Broadband costs across Canada 
Why do Canadian broadband rates vary so much? 
External Links
O-Net 
Olds Institute 
Olds College 
(Note:CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)
Ultrafast internet speeds that most Canadian city dwellers can only dream of will soon be available to all 8,500 residents in a rural Alberta community for as little as $57 a month, thanks to a project by the town's non-profit economic development foundation.

"We'll be the first 'gig town' in Canada," said Nathan Kusiek, director of marketing for O-Net, the community-owned internet service provider that runs the fibre optic network being built by the non-profit Olds Institute for Community and Regional Development in Olds, Alta., about 90 kilometres north of Calgary.

On Thursday, the board of O-Net gave approval for residents to get access to a full gigabit (or 1,000 megabits) per second of bandwidth for the same price that they currently pay for a guaranteed download speed of 100 megabits per second — $57 to $90 a month, depending on whether they have bundled their internet with TV and phone service.

'Because we're a community owned project we get to balance out profitability versus what's best for the community.'
—Nathan Kusiek, O-Net"Essentially, we have the capacity. It will actually be a really good experiment to see what people use," Kusiek said.

O-Net had been thinking about making all the bandwidth fully available to residents for some time, he added.

"Because we're a community-owned project we get to balance out profitability versus what's best for the community."

One gigabit per second is the same speed offered by Google Fiber, as a pilot project, in Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kans., for $70 a month — a service that is envied by residents of many other U.S. cities, if the internet buzz is any indication.

With that kind of bandwidth, Google says you can stream at least five high-definition videos at the same time (allowing multiple people to watch and download different things in different rooms of a house), among other things.

Read about the new ISP offering gigabit internet in Vancouver
A gigabit of bandwidth is considerably higher than the high-speed 175 to 250 megabits per second typically offered by fibre internet packages in big cities from internet providers such as Bell, Rogers or Shaw, typically for $115 to $226 per month. And it's blazingly fast compared to the average Canadian internet download speed of just 16.6 megabits per second for an average of about $54 a month, according to a recent report from internet metrics company Ookla.

Rural internet typically slow, expensive
The Olds project is a rarity. Most rural communities across Canada have to make do with internet service — often delivered by dial-up or satellite — that is slow or expensive, or both.

 Broadband costs Compare internet services across Canada Not too long ago, Olds was in that boat. Some businesses were even threatening to leave town because of the challenges posed by the sluggish internet.

"We had engineering companies here who were sending memory chips by courier because there wasn't enough bandwidth to deal with their stuff," recalls Joe Gustafson, who spearheaded the project to bring a fibre network to Olds.

Read why Canadian broadband rates vary so much 
Gustafson is head of the technology committee for the Olds Institute, which was started a decade ago as a partnership among the Town of Olds, Olds College, the Olds and District Chamber of Commerce and the Olds Agricultural Society.

At that time, the town realized that it couldn't attract technology-based businesses and that bandwidth was a challenge even to ordinary businesses. It came up with a plan — it would install a fibre network throughout the town that would connect to the larger inter-community network being built by the government at that time — the Alberta Supernet.

The Olds Institute managed to secure a $2.5 million grant from the Alberta government to plan its network and build a community facility at the library, making use of the network. That facility included a video conference centre and 15 terminals for residents without their own access to computers.

The institute also managed to get a $6 million loan from the town of Olds to build the network itself.

Established providers refused to use town's network
There were some speed bumps along the way. The town had trouble finding skilled labour to install the fibre cables between people's property lines and their homes, putting the project behind schedule.

Building the network was a challenge, partly due to a shortage of skilled labour, but it is expected to reach every home and business in town within the next year. (Courtesy O-Net)But eventually installation progressed and the Olds Institute began inviting large, commercial internet providers to offer their services via the new network. All of them refused to use a network they had not installed themselves, Gustafson said.

The community was undeterred. It came up with a new plan.

"We said, 'Well I guess if we're going to do this, we have to do our own services,'" Gustafson recalled.

The Olds Institute spent $3.5 million to buy the necessary electronic equipment to run internet and other services on the network and to build a central office to house it all. Last July, it launched O-Net.

The community-owned service offers not just internet, but also phone and IPTV services — TV signals carried on the network that includes dozens of SD and HD channels, and movies on demand that can be paused and later resumed.

All told, the project will probably have cost $13 million to $14 million when it's complete, Gustafson said.

"It's a very gutsy thing on behalf of council here in Olds to approve something like that," he added.

100 per cent coverage expected in 2014
About 60 per cent of homes and businesses in Olds, located almost midway between Calgary and Red Deer to the north, already have access to the town's fibre network, which is still under construction.

"Over the next year, we'll have the whole town covered," Kusiek said.

The Olds Institute managed to secure a $2.5 million grant from the Alberta government to plan its network and to build a community facility at the library making use of the network, including a video conference centre and 15 terminals for residents without their own access to computers. (Olds Municipal Library & Community Engagement Site) (Olds Municipal Library & Community Engagement Site)At that point, while everyone should be able to subscribe to O-Net's services if they want to, they will also have the option of choosing lower-speed internet service with other telecommunications companies.

Under O-Net's new plans, residential users will share the gigabit of bandwidth among all the households on the same network access point. However, Kusiek estimates there would "never be more than four of five people on a connection that would be fighting over a gig."

Businesses in town can buy access to a dedicated, guaranteed gigabit per second of bandwidth for $5,000 a month. Gustafson said the network's launch last fall has helped stabilized local businesses.

"Now there's no talk about people leaving because of bandwidth challenges."

The engineering firm that used to send thumb drives by courier now sends "massive amounts of data just over the internet."

College transformation
The network is also transforming Olds College. The agricultural-based college, which emphasizes hands-on learning, had previously been limping along with 40 megabits of bandwidth for its 4,000 full- and part-time students.

Now that it has the bandwidth available, Olds College, an agricultural-based college, will be issuing iPads to every new student starting in September and putting a greater emphasis on mobile learning. (Olds College)Jason Dewling, the vice-president for academic and research at the college, said the number of devices connected to the campus's WiFi network had doubled in each of the past three Septembers compared to the one before, and connectivity was spotty.

"You couldn't have a whole class on WiFi at the same time."

That made it impossible to push any kind of mobile learning — something that the college was starting to get into with initiatives such as an entrepreneurship course that required students to play an online game as part of its requirements.

Now, every space on campus allows each student to connect two devices at the same time. This September, every new student will receive an iPad and all textbooks will be web-based.

Dewling said the college is projecting a 10 per cent increase in the number of first year students this September, although it's hard to say how much of that is the result of the improved internet availability or the iPad program.

Olds is also hoping its network will attract new businesses in the future.

"We certainly have companies that are looking at us," Gustafson said. But he added that the fibre network only started operating last fall. "It's taking a while for people to understand, of course, what we have here."

Kusiek said the original goal of the project, to connect the entire town with a fibre network, was to attract new businesses and residents.

"I really think that now it is enough that [for] anyone looking to resettle, this is definitely a selling feature for Olds."



This is of interest as IT usuage in traditional "rural" occupations is skyrocketting...and may be a foreshadow of the modern version of Canada's "hewers of wood and miners of the earth" resource economy.    Whether it's GPS equiped crop sprayers to D12 bulldozers doing highway grade leveling to feller bunchers using it for locations in cutblock IT and internet communications are becoming much more prevelent.
  Unfortunately not all small downs have a college nearby which would drastically affect the possibilities of this occuring nationwide but might be the start of an larger advanced professional field tied into the rural/remote/isolated communities allowing for retention of both local skilled trades + educated IT based economies.  Small scattered communities tied into larger centers may allow for better intergration nationwide.


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## a_majoor (18 Jul 2013)

While this is very cool from a technical POV, my spider senses are tingling. We have seen lots of boondoggles over the years being promoted as "investments" (usually things like downtown arenas, performing arts centers and convention centers), all built using the taxpayer's money and all promising impressive ROI's, but generally sucking back taxpayer subsidies and bailouts instead.

Generally, the correct answer to proponents of such schemes should be: "if it is such a great idea/business/investment. why hasn't it already been done?"

While high speed fiber to the desktop may seem to be a somewhat more sensible investment than a hockey arena, you should be asking why a private business hasn't done this, and if not, why not? There may be many good and sufficient reasons (here is a link to an article that demonstrates that in the US, at least, high speed broadband is a victim of regulatory failure). I would also be interested to see the projected paybacks and profit figures of this project. I will be most pleased if it has a rapid payback (and even better if it is profitable, especially if it is profitable enough to displace taxes and lower the residential taxes of the town).


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## Dissident (19 Jul 2013)

While no expert, I did do work (design) on the Alberta Supernet about ten years ago. I am ambivalent about anything which would rely on it as a backbone.

While Olds might be close enough to Calgary for it not to be that big of a factor but: I know some of the smaller town/Native reserve were so bare bones that there is NO room for scalability in the hardware/infrastructure.


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## a_majoor (1 Aug 2013)

Since governments are determined to strip away savings and wealth through inflation and redistribution, people should be realigning their personal lives to become more efficient and get more from every dollar and hour (without handing it over to governments or crony's). Here are two ideas to get started (although there are plenty more; even growing a "Victory garden" and telecommuting or car pooling would do wonders). Specifics on US retirement accounts have analogies with Canadian pensions, TFSAs and RRSPs, make sure you know the rules:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/07/if-you-were-being-ripped-off-overpaying.html



> *If you were being ripped off overpaying for iphone docks or are willing to use 3D printed Orthotics then 3D printers can save a lot of money*
> 
> A Michigan University researchers feels the typical family can already save a great deal of money by making things with a 3D printer instead of buying them off the shelf.
> 
> ...



and

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/07/saving-lot-of-expenses-and-extreme.html
Multiple links inside article, follow link to see original 



> *Saving a lot of expenses and extreme early retirement*
> 
> People could look to new 3D printing to save money but there are likely many conventional ways to save money that they could choose.
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (8 Aug 2013)

Two article, both reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, which I think (hope) will provoke some thinking and, maybe, some reaction:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/employment-insurance-time-to-put-policy-ahead-of-politics/article13655224/#dashboard/follows/


> Employment Insurance: Time to put policy ahead of politics
> 
> GRANT BISHOP
> Special to The Globe and Mail
> ...



And

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/a-nation-of-100000-firefighters/article13647608/#dashboard/follows/


> A nation of $100,000 firefighters
> 
> MARGARET WENTE
> The Globe and Mail
> ...


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## Brad Sallows (9 Aug 2013)

I would really like to see the EI social spending agenda funded out of general revenue - where all welfare programs belong - but have almost given up hope that the CPC will tackle it (and have no belief whatsoever that the LPC or NDP would).

What happens with arbitration in the public sector - firefighters' compensation being perhaps the most egregious example - just makes me laugh, because the alternative is to cry.  For example, I was told - but have been unable to verify - that Kamloops firefighters have some sort of contractual link to Vancouver firefighters (the former get whatever the latter get) - notwithstanding the obvious cost-of-living differential.

Any group providing a service for which government (whatever level) can not allow them to cool their heels on strike for at least six months, should not have the right to withhold or impede services, period.  The alternative is simply extortion.


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## mariomike (9 Aug 2013)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> What happens with arbitration in the public sector - firefighters' compensation being perhaps the most egregious example - just makes me laugh, because the alternative is to cry.  For example, I was told - but have been unable to verify - that Kamloops firefighters have some sort of contractual link to Vancouver firefighters (the former get whatever the latter get) - notwithstanding the obvious cost-of-living differential.



This news story my be relevant.

“We’ve ( Kamloops ) had contract parity with Vancouver as long as I can remember.”
http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/news/162951306.html


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## Edward Campbell (9 Aug 2013)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> I would really like to see the EI social spending agenda funded out of general revenue - where all welfare programs belong - but have almost given up hope that the CPC will tackle it (and have no belief whatsoever that the LPC or NDP would).
> 
> What happens with arbitration in the public sector - firefighters' compensation being perhaps the most egregious example - just makes me laugh, because the alternative is to cry.  For example, I was told - but have been unable to verify - that Kamloops firefighters have some sort of contractual link to Vancouver firefighters (the former get whatever the latter get) - notwithstanding the obvious cost-of-living differential.
> 
> Any group providing a service for which government (whatever level) can not allow them to cool their heels on strike for at least six months, should not have the right to withhold or impede services, period.  The alternative is simply extortion.




Indeed, but see my comments in the _Segregation of Messes_ thread ~ we, the big, national "we," agreed to have public sector unions, with all the baggage that attends them.


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## Brad Sallows (9 Aug 2013)

The notion that "we" agree is a pleasant fiction which is window dressing for a hard reality: not everything can be put to a plebiscite, for practical and moral reasons.  The fact is that a small subset of "we", delegated by the larger "we", at some point in time, in a moment of weakness or ideological stubbornness, decided to allow public sector unions - or was it a keystone election issue in the election prior to the undertaking?  The existence of one group of employees permitted to withhold labour is insufficient cause to allow all who choose to do so.  "Essential" implies "can not be done without".  "Essential" is irreconcilable with the practice of withholding or reducing duties of employment, and creates a situation ripe for extortion.

The fact that a privilege can be granted by some governing party means it can be revoked by some governing party.  Whether or not it has gone on as long as any particular person can remember is irrelevant.  Compensation is a mix of factors, including what the local economy will bear.  This is a fact recognized indirectly by the tax code and some policies regarding allowances.  Essential service employees should either be fully employed, or fully released any time they decline to fulfill their duties.  I know no compelling reason any essential employee should be any freer to decline duty than any soldier.

The fat and happy "win" and "tradesies" horsesh!t has gone on long enough.  If everyone could be paid a uniform salary, we could do so and all notion of bargaining could go out the window.  But economic, social, human reality is: we can't.  So although the total "pie" can be grown (or shrunk) by broad policy, at any point in time the growth of someone's personal "pie" comes at the expense of someone else's.


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## Edward Campbell (16 Aug 2013)

And here, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and mail_ is a report on yet another proposal to move oil from Alberta to overseas markets, this time through Churchill, MB:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/oils-new-arctic-passage-to-europe/article13803628/#dashboard/follows/


> Oil’s new Arctic passage to Europe
> 
> JEFFREY JONES
> Calgary — The Globe and Mail
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (31 Aug 2013)

This report is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Post_:

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/08/30/canada-economy-growth-scenario/


> Here’s what needs to happen for Canada’s economy to take off again
> 
> Gordon Isfeld
> 
> ...




I have banged on about _productivity_ for years - and no one is interested, I understand that - and I keep harping on one issue: it is _management_, the "executive suites" not _labour_, the "shop floor" that is the drag on Canada's productivity. Good wages are not a bad thing but timid, quarter-by-quarter results driven business leaders, who were afraid to _invest_ in e.g. new production facilities when our dollar was strong to grow their enterprises are holding us back.


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## DBA (31 Aug 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I have banged on about _productivity_ for years - and no one is interested, I understand that - and I keep harping on one issue: it is _management_, the "executive suites" not _labour_, the "shop floor" that is the drag on Canada's productivity. Good wages are not a bad thing but timid, quarter-by-quarter results driven business leaders, who were afraid to _invest_ in e.g. new production facilities when our dollar was strong to grow their enterprises are holding us back.



Just try and do the same work with fewer employees in a sector dominated by unions. Without a sales/production/work increase to keep the same number of workers employed a productivity boost doesn't save any money and isn't worth the investment. Entire industries have been hollowed out due to this dynamic.


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## a_majoor (2 Sep 2013)

DBA said:
			
		

> Just try and do the same work with fewer employees in a sector dominated by unions. Without a sales/production/work increase to keep the same number of workers employed a productivity boost doesn't save any money and isn't worth the investment. Entire industries have been hollowed out due to this dynamic.



While the Public sector is dominated by unions, the participation of unionized labour in the private sector has been declining for years, so with the exception of some segments of the economy like the "Big Three" automakers, I don't think this is the correct argument anymore.

A different avenue to explore is government regulations. I have read that the average small business person in Ontario needs to do 30 hr/week of government paperwork to meet the various federal, provincial and municipal regulations. This is a bit like telling the average person they can only do productive work (and earn their wages) for three weeks of every month. Certainly small business cannot effectively compete in the marketplace (much less the global market) if so much time and attention is needed for non productive "work". Large business can absorb the costs of dedicated HR and other staff to do the paperwork, but even then we are looking at units of highly paid professionals and lawyers who are not adding to the bottom line; something to consider when wondering why the Chinese, Koreans and even Indians are cleaning our clocks in the world market.


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## Edward Campbell (3 Sep 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> And here, at last, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _New York Times_, is a sensible explanation of the real crux of the _inequality_ problem ~ it stifles _socio-economic_ mobility which is not only a attribute of successful societies, I would argue it is a requirement:
> 
> http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/we-were-middle-class-once-and-young/?_r=1&
> 
> I think we are all familiar with the "rags to riches to rags" cycle in e.g. English history - one or two generations raise a family from nothing to riches, another one or two generations maintain that status and then another generation or two spend it all and reduce the family back to nothing. There is a pithy saying in Chinese that tells the same story in fewer words. We have, across humanity, a common view of socio-economic mobility and, also, a common _sense_ that it is a good thing. What worries Krugman ~ and should worry us all ~ is that our "system" appears to be making socio-economic mobility harder to achieve. That Canada is somewhat less ossified than America is not a cause for celebration.




But Andrew Coyne, in an article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_ suggests that the _inequality_ problem was solved about 20 years ago:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/02/the-myth-of-income-inequality/


> The myth of income inequality: Since the bleak 90s, things have actually gotten better
> 
> Andrew Coyne
> 
> ...




Now, some people will not be persuaded because _inequality_ is, in Canada, a political rather than an economic issue.


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## CougarKing (5 Sep 2013)

If only Andrew Coyne actually weighed in on the "other things worth measuring" he mentioned at the end of this piece, in order to make this competitiveness ranking less "arbitrary"...  :-\

National Post link



> *Andrew Coyne: Arbitrary criteria, arbitrarily weighted, Canada’s competitiveness ranking means close to nothing*
> 
> The Global Competitiveness Report, as the World Economic Forum calls it, is the sonorous name given a ponderous inquiry into a meaningless concept.
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (5 Sep 2013)

As I have said before, I pay attention to that and several other indices, but I'm not concerned that we, Canadians, are first or fifth or even 14th. I am concerned that we are always in the "best" 10% in all the "good" indices for which we are qualified.

There is a _*real*_ G-20, the "top 10%" of the world's nations, and Canada is a charter member in things like GDP (_per capita_), governance (transparency, democratic institutions, etc), competitiveness, quality of life, _contributions_ (foreign aid, UN support, etc), life expectancy and, and, and, nearly _ad infinitum_. It is the sum of all these indicators that makes a country "top" or not. Thus China and India, despite their rapid rise in many things, still trail much smaller countries like Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway in their "development." They are powerful but deficient to the point of weakness in many areas; but, I think, they (China, for sure) recognize their deficiencies and actually use countries like Canada as "targets" for their own internal planning.

Prime Minister Chrétien used to crow when we were #1 in the UN's (less than really meaningful) Human Development Index; no one is crowing now that we have dropped to around 10th, but we are, still, clearly and correctly, well within that "top 10%," and that, our status across all the good indices rather than our absolute ranking in any one, is what matters.


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## Edward Campbell (5 Sep 2013)

To add a bit, I have attached a spreadsheet which is an index of indices. It shows the Top 10%/Top 20 in eight different categories: GDP (per capita), _transparency_ (an expression of least corrupt governments), economic freedom (an expression of protection of property right at law), _democracy_ (an expression of *liberal* democracy, including e.g. rights to freedom of speech and assembly), quality of life, _human development_, life expectancy (an indicator of public health) and defence spending.

Now I can be ~ should be ~ accused of "cooking the books" just a wee bit, but, in truth, those are the sorts of indices I follow.

In my estimation if your country's name isn't in colour you are not very "advanced," you may be rich but your still quite _underdeveloped_ in broad  terms. Equally, the higher up the colour scale you go (from red through blue, green and orange through to magenta) the more _advanced_ you are.

It will not be surprising to see that the "top" countries (magenta, orange, green and blue) are all rich ... it is hard to make progress if you are poor.

Perhaps the top two will be a tiny bit surprising. But it is also, maybe, worthy of note, that the USA just sneaks into the top 20 in 3 of the 8 indices and that France, Spain and Italy, all G-8 members, don't, really, make the grade at all.

Is there a _coalition_ of democracies that have the economic and _social_ capacity to work, in all areas including militarily on a global basis? Yes: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. (Note that Singapore doesn't make the "top 20" in the democracy index because of its restrictions of freedom of association, assembly and, to a lesser degree, speech.)


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## Edward Campbell (11 Sep 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> But Andrew Coyne, in an article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_ suggests that the _inequality_ problem was solved about 20 years ago:
> 
> http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/02/the-myth-of-income-inequality/
> 
> Now, some people will not be persuaded because _inequality_ is, in Canada, a political rather than an economic issue.




The *fact* that income inequality has _improved_, we have gotten less and less unequal, in Canada over the past 20 years is totally lost on the overwhelming majority of Canadians - or, at least, of _Globe and Mail_ readers. The _Globe_ runs an unofficial poll every day; here are the results of today's:


*Over time, Canada's income gap has become:*

     Better          ~  9%

     Worse        ~ 83%

     Unchanged ~  7%


So, apparently, fewer than 10% of Canadians actually bother to find out the facts - is it any wonder so many vote Liberal or NDP?


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## Edward Campbell (15 Sep 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> As usual, the _Good Grey Globe's_ Jeffrey Simpson manages to get economic issues wrong, in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/who-wants-to-talk-about-income-inequality/article2245133/
> 
> ...




While _inequality_ is not (and never was) a really serious problem in Canada ~ a worry but not a threat ~ the same was not and still is not true for the Americans. The data is this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Washington Post_, shows that the American economy, which is based on consumption, is still in trouble because the consumers are not making any economic progress:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/13/this-is-how-everyones-been-doing-since-the-financial-crisis/


> This is how everyone’s been doing since the financial crisis
> 
> By Brad Plumer
> 
> ...




Two points:

     1. The author, Brad Plumer, is well known as a proponent of _progressive_ (generally anti-capitalist) ideas; but

     2. The data does point to a flaw in the US recovery. America is having trouble adjusting to the massive loss of low skill, high wage _industrial_ jobs. The data in chart 8 showing massive job losses for Black men
         illustrates this. Black men in America are, broadly, less well educated than White and, especially, Asian Americans and they are, therefore, least able to _migrate_ to high skill jobs.

These data, no mater how interpreted, matter to Canada because we are so broadly and deeply tied to the US. If, as I suspect, the US _recovery_ is deeply flawed then we, too, will suffer.


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## Kirkhill (15 Sep 2013)

Interesting map on Household Income:

Incomes are increasing along the line of the Keystone XL pipeline from the Bakken Shale to the Gulf Refineries........

Every place else is getting poorer.


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## a_majoor (17 Sep 2013)

Alberta takes aim at its unfunded liabilities problem. Look for something similar coming to every other Canadian jurisdiction and the Federal government since the cost and potential negative blowback of unfunded liabilities is literally astronomical (the balance of Federal unfunded liabilities is @ $500 billion dollars, the balance for Alberta isn't quite so bad, but still a hidden cost that shoud be addressed):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/alberta-tackles-pension-costs-with-sweeping-reforms/article14366399/



> *Alberta tackles pension costs with sweeping reforms*
> KELLY CRYDERMAN AND BILL CURRY
> CALGARY AND OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
> Published Monday, Sep. 16 2013, 10:14 PM EDT
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (18 Sep 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> More on the TPP, especially on the difficulties, in this report which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tpp-talks-are-canadas-best-ever-opportunity-for-trade-diversification/article4600407/
> 
> ...




Another of my favourite  :deadhorse: is beaten, again, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/17/john-ivison-scrapping-supply-management-would-the-most-consumer-first-thing-the-tories-could-do/


> Scrapping supply management would the most ‘consumer first’ thing the Tories could do
> 
> John Ivison
> 
> ...




I agree fully with John Ivison. Supply management is poor public policy, it is vote buying of the worst sort. It is, by the way, a cornerstone of the EU's system.


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## GAP (19 Sep 2013)

Canadian Mint ready to test its own digital money project
John Greenwood | 19/09/13
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/09/19/canadian-mint-pushes-ahead-in-murky-world-of-crypto-currency-with-mintchip-project/

As the government body responsible for the production of loonies, toonies, nickles and sundry “limited-edition” collector coins, the Royal Canadian Mint is hardly the first thing that comes to mind when you think of cutting-edge technology. But that may be about to change.

Sometime before the end of this year, software engineers at the 105-year-old Crown corp. will begin pilot testing a novel form of digital currency that so far has received little attention but which has the potential to revolutionize how we do business.

“Where we’re going is not a road that has been travelled,” said Marc Brûlé, head of the MintChip project and chief financial officer of the Mint. “It has its challenges but there are lots of people who are encouraging us.”

Like many such technologies, the initiative has mostly been cloaked in secrecy — apart from an app building contest last year aimed at coming up with new ways of using the currency. Beyond that, the Mint has been determinedly tight-lipped about what it’s up to, which has only served to heighten expectations among the tight-knit community of techno-geeks and others that are focused on the sector.

Certainly, interest in so-called crypto-currencies is exploding for a variety of reasons, not least because of loss of faith in traditional money in the wake of recent central bank money-printing. Digital money such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and various online game currencies that have made the jump into the real world are starting to garner major attention, but there’s a big difference between them and what the Mint is doing. As a government organization, the Mint has the backing of the federal government, while Bitcoin and the like clearly do not.
more on link


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## Brad Sallows (19 Sep 2013)

Good idea.  I'm fully confident the small team of software engineers working for the Mint is collectively smarter than the tens of thousands of hackers that will spend long hours attempting to break the system.


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## Edward Campbell (28 Sep 2013)

Andrew Coyne takes a longer term look at the Canadian fiscal realities in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/27/andrew-coyne-on-canadas-new-fiscal-reality-ottawa-has-the-money-and-the-provinces-need-it-desperately/


> Andrew Coyne on Canada’s new fiscal reality: Ottawa has the money and the provinces need it — desperately
> 
> Andrew Coyne
> 
> ...




Healthcare, the one system we all want to keep, is not affordable in its current form.

The best solution is for the federal government to refuse to add any new money ~ the aim being to force the provinces to _innovate_. The only thing the feds should do for the provinces is to repeal the Canada Health Act so that its _Marxist_ provisions will not constrain the provinces.

The only model for health care which does not bear any examination is that of the USA ~ it is worse than ours: higher costs and worse outcomes.

It is fairly well known that I have scant regard for the French government and its policies, but French health care is good: low cost and good outcomes. Singapore's new system is, as far as I can see, the best model for us.


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## Edward Campbell (29 Sep 2013)

Here is more, on the same theme, but focused on the national Capital Region, in an article which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Ottawa Citizen_:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Goodbye+City/8969649/story.html


> Goodbye, Fat City
> *The global debt crisis has us in its grip — and won’t soon let go*
> 
> BY JAMES BAGNALL, OTTAWA CITIZEN
> ...




I do not share James Bagnall's pessimism. I _think_ that major cuts in public service employment actually serve the NCR by giving it a large, available pool of well educated workers who will make it attractive for new private businesses to settle here, in Ottawa.

Like the military, and for the same reasons, the public service is not just _unproductive_, it is, in too many cases, _counter-productive_.


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## Edward Campbell (1 Oct 2013)

To continue my periodic diatribes about shrinking government .... I had to put this _somewhere_:





Source: Liberty Maniacs.

Apologies to all you government workers out there.


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## a_majoor (13 Oct 2013)

The idea that governments can remove protections and confiscate private wealth is bad enough; the idea that the Government of Canada is preparing legislation to this effect should be intolerable to all upright citizens:

http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/daniel-amerman/bail-ins-taking-private-wealth



> *Bail Ins and Taking Private Wealth*
> 
> A new method of taking private sector wealth has been spreading around the world this year. This mechanism is called a "bail in", and it is based on the premise that there are certain entities which are too important for the well-being of the general public to allow them to go into bankruptcy or to be liquidated.
> 
> ...



Although the Conservative Government has been relatively prudent and handled the financial crisis reasonably well, the fact that the unfunded liabilities of government pensions is in the neighbourhood of $500 billion CAD (separate from the national debt of $550 billion CAD) should give everyone pause. After all, if civil servants don't have their pensions funded, what is to stop a future government of the day from confiscating your RRSP in order to pay off the pensioners? Or how about seizing wealth to bail out irresponsible governments like the McGuinty/Wynne government of Ontario?


----------



## Brad Sallows (15 Oct 2013)

Not gonna happen.  They want to live to reach retirement.


----------



## a_majoor (16 Oct 2013)

Cypriot and Polish legislators are not swinging from lampposts, so the odds seem to be in favour of the political class (so far).


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver (24 Oct 2013)

I thought this little article on a law site I monitor is of relevance here.

http://www.mondaq.com/canada/x/270316/Corporate+Tax/Morality+and+Tax&email_access=on


----------



## a_majoor (29 Oct 2013)

Our government finally delivered the goods. Even though the media celebrates this victory with the usual sound of crickets, the Economist takes a much brighter view. The economic boost will go a long way to helping the government balance the books, and probably accounts for the Finance Minister suggesting there will be a "big surplus" in 2015, an otherwise rash and inexplicable comment:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588375-trade-pact-europe-points-way-global-market-services-canada-doesnt-get-any



> *Canada doesn’t get any sexier than this*
> 
> A trade pact with Europe points the way to a global market in services
> Oct 26th 2013 |From the print edition
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (30 Oct 2013)

I would like to see something like this done in Canada as well, to develop a much better and more responsive economic model than what various governments and agencies use. (One constant criticism of the CPI is the "basket" is adjusted to artificially supress the true rate of inflation. Looking at food and fuel prices over the past several years I would say the CPI certainly does not reflect the relity I am facing). Regardless if data manipulation is a result of deliberate misrepresentation or poorly chosen models, "Big Data" methods resolve the problem by being inclusive and not relying on curated data sets to work:

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/next-big-thing-economic-data/



> *The Next Big Thing You Missed: Big-Data Men Rewrite Government’s Tired Economic Models*
> BY MARCUS WOHLSEN10.29.136:30 AM
> 
> The Consumer Price Index is one of the country’s most closely watched economic statistics, a key measure of inflation and buying across the U.S. The trouble is that it’s compiled by the U.S. government, which is still stuck in the technological dark ages. This month, the index didn’t even arrive on time, thanks to the government shutdown.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (6 Nov 2013)

Liberal insider David MacNaughton offers some pretty sound advice to Ontario and, indeed, to Canada, in this opinion piece whoch is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/ontario-needs-fundamental-change-not-a-fight-over-austerity-vs-stimulus/article15291923/#dashboard/follows/


> Ontario needs fundamental change, not a fight over austerity vs. stimulus
> 
> DAVID MACNAUGHTON
> Contributed to The Globe and Mail
> ...




Now, this report is _partisan_, to be sure. Mr MacNaghton is arguing that both Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath are wrong, and he's partially right.

But: while a "slash and burn" attack on all government spending is, indeed, neither necessary nor desirable, the cuts ~ deep cuts ~ proposed in Don Drummond's (Feb 2012) Report to Premier McGuinty still make very, very good sense and still offer the best programme for Ontario. Equally, there is some need for more and *better* spending on education and infrastructure ~ which must be done at the expense of social programmes other then healthcare (which has a political "life" (imperative) of its own). But that's not what Ms Horwath wants ~ she wants to toss more and more and more money into bottomless pits of socialistic "do good_ism_" which is a recipe for failure.


----------



## a_majoor (16 Nov 2013)

Although part of me is applauding the idea of opening up access to a wider, deeper and more diversified source of funding, a much larger part is asking "what could possibly go wrong?"  

(Of course the even larger part is totally disgusted, since this money is not going to be invested at all, but simply to pay for current consumption).

http://english.caixin.com/2013-11-06/100600037.html

[qhote]
*Canadian Province Issues Offshore Yuan-Denominated Bonds*
British Columbia officials says plan was to sell 500 million yuan worth, but oversubscribing pushed the amount raised up five times
By staff reporter Wang Liwei

(Beijing) – Canada's western province of British Columbia said on November 5 it had completed the issuance of one-year offshore yuan-denominated bonds and raised 2.5 billion yuan.

This is the first time a foreign government has issued offshore yuan bonds. Mike de Jong, finance minister of Canada's westernmost province, said officials had intended to raise only 500 million yuan but the bonds were largely oversubscribed.

Central banks and foreign institutions snapped up 62 percent of the bonds. Fund asset managers bought 18 percent. Investors in Hong Kong took 46 percent of the bonds, and 40 percent went to U.S. investors.

The bonds carry a yield of 2.25 percent. This is 10 to 15 basis points lower than bonds sold by the Chinese government, said HSBC, the sole book runner of the issuance. The bonds will be listed in Luxembourg.

Jim Hopkins, assistant deputy minister of British Columbia's finance ministry, said earlier that the province wanted to be an early entrant in the offshore yuan market, which is expected to grow rapidly and benefit participants in terms of lower trading cost with China and more diversified financing and investment channels.

An official with the ministry said the offshore yuan bond market was weighted down a bit in the second and third quarters of this year because of the anticipated impact of the U.S. Fed slowing its so-called quantitative easing policy. He expected the market to improve as investors change their opinions.

Meanwhile, China's Ministry of Finance said on November 5 that it will sell dim sum bonds worth 10 billion yuan in Hong Kong on November 21. This will be the second issuance this year. This first was in June, when 13 billion yuan worth of the bonds were sold.

Hong Kong residents will be able to buy up to 3 billion yuan worth of those bonds through banks and, for the first time, through the former British colony's bourse, the ministry said. Institutional investors will get the rest.
[/quote]


----------



## Edward Campbell (18 Nov 2013)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I think we, Canada, need to get our petroleum to the global markets no matter what Americans, our own Canadian aboriginals or the children of the _Occupy ______ movement think. But this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_, notes, Canadian _first nations_ and _Occupy ______ - both of which are, as Thucydides and others have reminded us, are financed by big American foundations with ties to their energy sector - have joined forces to slow/stop that process:
> 
> http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/06/26/john-ivison-occupy-and-idle-no-more-could-team-up-to-block-pipelines-going-east/
> 
> ...




And Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency gets it *exactly right* about the oil sand and pipelines through BC in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/oil-sands-not-a-major-source-of-climate-change-says-iea-economist/article15480326/#dashboard/follows/


> Oil sands not a major source of climate change: IEA economist
> 
> SHAWN MCCARTHY - GLOBAL ENERGY REPORTER
> OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
> ...




The key points that the *best way to reduce green house gasses* is to _increase_ oil sands and natural gas production and push pipelines through BC so that Asia, especially China, can replace its high GHG producing coal power power plants with cleaner, greener oil and gas power plants. Ditto for oil and gas to America, where there is no such things as "clean coal." It's a lie.






But the _clean coal_ lobby in America is working as hand as it can, in league with some other interests, including many not very bright environmentalists, to destroy Canada's oil industry so that American coal miners can keep on poisoning the atmosphere.


----------



## a_majoor (18 Nov 2013)

Numbers are in for one of the Progressive/Left's pet ideas, annual garunteed income. As might be expected, the results are quite the opposite of what they predicted:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-15/canadian-test-shows-income-guarantees-don-t-work.html



> *Canadian Test Shows Income Guarantees Don't Work*
> By Megan McArdle Nov 15, 2013 4:24 PM ET .
> 
> A follow-up on this morning’s post on guaranteed incomes: I’m reminded that Jim Manzi wrote two excellent pieces outlining the data we have on experiments with a guaranteed income. Here’s his summary of a Canadian experiment that topped off the incomes of folks who worked so that they retained more of their benefits and income than they otherwise would have:
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (18 Nov 2013)

Some readers of these threads will be certain that I am a mean, heartless old man, worthy of a Dickens quote:

     *"Are there no prisons?"*
          _"Plenty of prisons..."_
     *"And the Union workhouses."* demanded Scrooge. *"Are they still in operation?"*
          _"Both very busy, sir..."_
     *"Those who are badly off must go there."*
          _"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."_
     *"If they would rather die,"* said Scrooge, *"they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."*

But I only want the government to spend OUR money in ways which serve a _utilitarian_ purpose: the greatest good for the greatest number, as Jeremy Bentham may (or may not) have said.

This idea, reported in an article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Ottawa Citizen_, would be good public policy but dreadful politics and, for that reason, it will never see the light of day:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Canadian+Taxpayers+Federation+calls+sweeping+changes/9179741/story.html


> Canadian Taxpayers Federation calls for sweeping changes to Employment Insurance
> 
> BY JESSICA BARRETT, POSTMEDIA NEWS
> 
> ...




Employment Insurance is a completely counter-productive programme. It does far more harm than good. I agree that we need want to have some sort of programme to help, briefly (and rarely) when they are between jobs but EI is, now, a monster. Gregory Thomas' idea does that without distorting the labour market. I concede that Mr Thomas' idea would do harm to some people ~ but it may be that they need a jolt in order to take responsibility for themselves.


----------



## a_majoor (20 Nov 2013)

What not to do. While the US is the focus on the story, the fact that Canada seems to be forging ahead with a "go it alone" sort of approach to TPP negotiations doesn't seem like a very inspired negotiating position. While we should not roll over and play dead, maybe some more flexibility is going to be needed as the talks progress:

http://boingboing.net/2013/11/19/data-visualization-shows-us-is.html



> *Data visualization shows US isolation in pushing for brutal Trans-Pacific Partnership*
> Cory Doctorow at 6:10 pm Tue, Nov 19, 2013
> 
> Gabriel Michael, a PhD candidate at George Washington University, subjected the IP Chapter of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership, leaked by Wikileaks last week to statistical analysis. The leaked draft has extensive footnotes indicating each country's negotiating positions. By analyzing the frequency with which the US appears as the sole objector to other nations' positions, and when the US is the sole proponent of clauses to which other nations object, Michael was able to show that TPP really is an American-run show pushing an American agenda, not a multilateral trade deal being negotiated to everyone's mutual benefit. Though Canada is also one of the main belligerents, with even more unilateral positions than the USA.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (6 Dec 2013)

Because stupidity is contagious and because the _Good Grey Globe's_ Jeffrey Simpson is both *a)* an economic illiterate, and *b)* widely read and admired amongst those adhering to the _Laurentian consensus_ (in fact Simpson is a charter member of the _Laurentian elites_) I'm sure this idea - which is nothing more nor less than conscription - will be popular, stupid but wildly popular:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/to-rein-in-health-costs-rein-in-salaries/article15788438/#dashboard/follows/


> To rein in health costs, rein in salaries
> 
> JEFFREY SIMPSON
> The Globe and Mail
> ...



This is a classic _socialist Marxist_ answer to everything: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." It sounds wonderful; millions, I would guess billions of people believe it - that's because billions of people are stupid. Marx has nothing to offer in either economic or social remedies. All Marxists, including those with PhDs and many, many honours (who teach in  some of the world's most prestigious universities) are blind fools.

Of course wages are a factor in the cost of health care; so are the wages of auto workers in the cost of your new car and the salaries of engineers and technicians in your monthly internet bill, and, and, and ... shall we conscript them all? A large wing of Thomas Mulcair's NDP and a too large wing of Justin Trueau's Liberals would say "Yes!" And that's why, despite doctrinal reservations and ongoing scandals, Canadians who actually think - and I hope that's 20% of us - will vote for the Conservatives. Ten percent of us (Canadians, _en masse_) are stupid conservatives, so we already have their votes, and 10% of us are _traditional_ Conservatives and we have their vote, too, so if 20% of us are smart (about the global average, I think ~ think bell curves and all that) then we will elect a CPC majority and consign Simpson's prescription to the trash heap of socio-economic history, where it belongs.


----------



## a_majoor (6 Dec 2013)

Too bad Simpson didn't read a bit of Adam Smith in his earlier life; the reason the salaries of these specialists is rising is because there is an increasing _demand_ for health care specialists of all sorts, while the _supply_ of medical specialists is relatively inelastic (it takes @ ten years to get a new GP out the door, possibly _much_ more for a specialist).

No need to invoke FA Hayek, the Austrian school, the Chicago school or any other advanced economic or econometric theories, this is the supply and demand curve; which used to be taught in high school....


----------



## Kirkhill (6 Dec 2013)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Too bad Simpson didn't read a bit of Adam Smith in his earlier life, the reason the salaries of these specialists is rising is because there is an increasing _demand_ for health care specialists of all sorts, while the [/i]supply[/i] of medical specialists is relatively inelastic (it takes @ ten years to get a new GP out the door, possibly _much_ more for a specialist).
> 
> No need to invoke FA Hayek, the Austrian school, the Chicago school or any other advanced economic or econometric theories, this is the supply and demand curve; which used to be taught in high school....



Don't forget that Jeff's buddies in guvmint (red, blue and orange - it started with John Robarts and Bill Davis and OHIP) are the ones that decided the first method of reducing costs was to "control" (reduce) the number of Doctors and Nurses in the first place.  A notion which was not strongly opposed by those unions (professional associations).

Fewer doctors, went the argument, fewer hours to charge.
But the demand trend remained constant.
So the Doctors charged more.
So the costs went higher.
So the guvmint controlled billables.
So the Doctors left.
But the demand trend remained constant
So the guvmint allowed pay raises
So Doctors returned (actually came from South Africa - situation worse than Canada apparently)
So the costs went higher.

Jeffrey wants to go back to a time that was and a solution that wasn't.  Apparently Alzheimers has set in there as well.  That movie has already played.


----------



## Brad Sallows (7 Dec 2013)

>What happened in recent years was completely predictable and avoidable. Put a large amount of additional money into any public enterprise without the money being tied down and targeted, and well-organized groups within the enterprise will mobilize, find all sorts of reasons why they need more, flex their collective muscle and, usually, get governments to yield.

Just substitute "teachers" or "emergency services" or "city employees" (or any of a number of other occupations) in place of "doctors" and see how fast Simpson runs to avoid the deluge of sh!t heading his way.


----------



## a_majoor (7 Dec 2013)

And of course there is more sophisticated analysis as well:

No one actually sees the cost of healthcare, so it is effectively a "free good"; demand becomes unlimited.

The pressure on supply becomes acute, Bob Rae throttled the production of doctors to "cut costs" in the 1990's, the downstream effects in Ontario alone is we are short something like 500 GPs across the province (and I would imagine corresponding nurses, techs and so on), more doctors retire of move to greener pastures to escape the bureaucratic innanities of working in Ontario and as Brad points out, monies that "should" be going to healthcare are being siphoned off. Under McGuinty we watched billions dissapear for "eHealth" and the air ambulance fiasco, as well as rising wages (but no corresponding increase in outputs or productivity).

So now the supply curve is very flat (and could take 10 years to raise) while the demand curve is practically vertical. I will leave it as an exercise for Simpson to draw that supply/demand curve and calculate the intersection....


----------



## a_majoor (7 Dec 2013)

Before anyone throws a fit of snark and says this article is about the United States (it is), I want everyone to sit down and think about the corresponding situation(s) here. Canada has over $500 billion in federal public debt. Ontario alone has $200 billion in Provincial public debt (and rising rapidly), Quebec and virtually all the other provinces are in the same boat. Unfunded Federal liabilities are estimated to be another $500 billion (mostly pensions and benefits to federal workers), and while I have not been able to find collated figures for the provinces, there is little reason to think the situation is different. Municipalities add yet another toxic layer to this cake of indebtedness and unfunded liabilities. 

So yes, if you are doing "the right things" to protect youself and families, the political class sees you as a target, and there is little doubt in my mind Canadian politicians are coming for your wealth too.

How to protect yourself will be interesting and difficult; you will have to adopt a lifestyle that minimises your exposure and dependence on the "grid", become self sufficient in many regards and perhaps change your lifestyle towards the "extreme retirement" movement, where you control and minimise every possible expense. Urban "victory gardens" in the back yard might be the sign of the times in the near to mid future.

Or, we could work to displace the current political class and remove the tax, regulatory and institutional barriers to economic growth, while cutting spending and focusing on the true responsibilities of government.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/12/mass-affluent-are-political-and.html



> *They are coming for your retirement and college savings*
> 
> USA Today has an article calling the mass affluent the new rich. This relabeling seems to be spinning it so that this group is a suitable target for redistribution (ie higher taxes). The mass affluent generally do not consider themselves to be rich and have just executed the lifeplan that all financial people tell people to follow.
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (8 Dec 2013)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Good idea.  I'm fully confident the small team of software engineers working for the Mint is collectively smarter than the tens of thousands of hackers that will spend long hours attempting to break the system.



The technical reason Bitcoins are so strong:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2013/11/28/global-bitcoin-computing-power-now-256-times-faster-than-top-500-supercomputers-combined/



> *Global Bitcoin Computing Power Now 256 Times Faster Than Top 500 Supercomputers, Combined!*
> 
> I admit, like a lot of others, I’ve found myself with a bit of a bitcoin obsession lately. I find the vast amount of effort it takes to create something that doesn’t actually exist, completely fascinating. So I decided to find out how much computing power is exerted in the effort to mine and run the global bitcoin network.
> 
> ...



Now the bitcoin network isn't actually faster than dedicated supercomputers, simply has far more capacity and capability. Brad mentioned in some other thread that since the origins of the bitcoin are obscure, you could potentially be acessing an intelligence agency "honey trap" by using bitcoins, if that is true then the unknown genieii who created bitcoins have assembled the largest distributed comuter network ever created, although for what purpose we could only guess.

As for what super and hyper computers could be used for, things like weather and economic modeling would still be impossible, the are nonlinear systems with millions or billions of inputs and connections, and changes in any factor do not propagate in linear ways through the system.


----------



## a_majoor (9 Dec 2013)

While a Trillion dollars sounds impressive, it is only a small drop in the giant ocean of debt that is engulfing the world. I am more excited in the ability of small and medium sized business to access global markets through regulatory streamlining, which will help national economies to no end:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/12/08/auto-draft-11/



> *U.S. Trade Rep: Bali Deal Shows WTO’s Potential*
> 
> By Ben Otto
> 
> ...



And a 106 page report that suggests that the larger trade deals in progress in the 2013-14 time frame could be worth another $2 trillion to the global economy. Canada really needs to get a piece of this action for our own prosperity and help stablilize our debt position (getting the Federal budget balanced is only the first step)

http://www.piie.com/publications/papers/hufbauerschott20130422.pdf


----------



## a_majoor (12 Dec 2013)

Canada Post will commit Seppuku over the next five years. Seeing as most of the functions of a Post Office have been taken over by UPS and email, this is probably the best thsy could hope for, while taxpayers and the few people who stil use "mail" bear the brunt of the costs:

extbigfuture.com/2013/12/snail-mail-circling-drain-canada-will.html



> *The Slow Death of Snail mail - Canada will phase out door to door mail delivery over 5 years*
> 
> Canada will have urban home delivery of mail phased out over the next five years.
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (13 Dec 2013)

We are doing some things right in some places (large charts and maps, follow link):

http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/the-most-pro-capitalism-place-to-live-in-north-america-is/



> *The Most Pro-Capitalism Place to Live in North America Is…*
> December 13, 2013 by Dan Mitchell
> 
> Back in February, I said Australia probably was the country most likely to survive and prosper as much of the world suffered fiscal collapse and social chaos.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (3 Jan 2014)

A very interesting idea: what we consider "First World problems" (i.e. not getting your Christmas present shipped by Amazon right away) is an indicator of what it _really_ means to be living in a First World society. This has some implications besides the obvious ones of the shift to new models of "utilities". 

We take this sort of reliable service for granted, but since our political and bureaucratic class isn't at all invested in the idea that they are responsible to maintain the national, regional and local infrastructure (the City Engineer of London, ON was quoted a few years back complaining that he estimated it would take $30 million/year to keep London's infrastructure maintained, Council voted $8 million. You can probably find similar examples where you live), then many of the basics like clean water, sewage, electrical energy and surface transportation could become degraded to the point that we are living in a Second World society at least. Points to ponder:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-02/two-cheers-for-first-world-problems-.html



> *Two Cheers for 'First World Problems'*
> By Virginia Postrel  Jan 2, 2014 3:37 PM ET  - Comments  Email  Print
> 
> Is this the symbol of a rich and whiny society?
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (4 Jan 2014)

It is well know, I suppose, by those who follow my posts, that I put a great deal of stock in the so-called transparency indices. I believe that official "honesty," and lack of same, has a real, measurable effect on economic growth, productivity and so on.

The latest results are clearly visible in this graphic (yellow - countries like Canada - are open and "honest," transparent; dark red - countries like Afghanistan and North Korea - have "closed" and corrupt government, and economies that match):








It is somewhat distressing to note that the USA is "darker" (less open and honest) than Canada; that's not where we want our most important trading partner to be. It is encouraging to see that China is less "dark' than in past years ~ not good, not by any stretch of the imagination, but not as bad as many (even most).


----------



## George Wallace (4 Jan 2014)

Unless my eyes deceive me, the US of A is on par with the majority of the solvent members of the G8 in Europe.   Only the Scandinavian countries seem to be lighter along with Denmark and the Netherlands.


----------



## Edward Campbell (4 Jan 2014)

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Unless my eyes deceive me, the US of A is on par with the majority of the solvent members of the G8 in Europe.   Only the Scandinavian countries seem to be lighter along with Denmark and the Netherlands.




And Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong, too.


----------



## Brad Sallows (5 Jan 2014)

>It is somewhat distressing to note that the USA is "darker"...

Aha!  These accusations of corruption are just window dressing for RACISM!


----------



## Edward Campbell (5 Jan 2014)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> >It is somewhat distressing to note that the USA is "darker"...
> 
> Aha!  These accusations of corruption are just window dressing for RACISM!




 :rofl:  Got me, Brad!


----------



## a_majoor (10 Jan 2014)

While the specific examples are far more horrifying than London, ON's quest to shut down the local Food Truck industry by demanding all menus be sent to committee for review (to see if they were "diverse enough"), overall this is a variation of the Local Knowledge Problem, with some crony capitalism thrown in for good measure. Dealing with this micro scale harassment of small business will boost economic output in the small business sector, and create jobs and wealth for all Canadians:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-08/for-small-businesses-small-matters.html



> *For Small Businesses, Small Matters *
> By Megan McArdle Jan 9, 2014 9:00 AM ET
> 
> Health insurance just isn't high on the list of small-business owners' worries.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (12 Jan 2014)

I am posting the link to this (rather long) article here, since the experience in Appalachia is very similar to various regions and pockets of poverty here in Canada, and for many of the same reasons. Sadly, the issue of low quality workers and lack of education/skillsets to draw quality jobs is something that is not quickly repairable, that may be the work of a generation.

Of course, one of the perverse incentives is the bureaucrats who administer the plethora of programs in the region are paid _because_ people are poor and don't have the tools and skillsets to succeed. Eliminate poverty and you eliminate the cushy government jobs as well....

http://nationalreview.com/article/367903/white-ghetto-kevin-d-williamson


----------



## Edward Campbell (15 Jan 2014)

Every so often the government gets it right, as illustrated by this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Ottawa Citizen_:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/Feds+double+number+international+students/9388016/story.html


> Feds to double number of international students
> 
> BY PETER O'NEIL, POSTMEDIA NEWS
> 
> ...




I _think_ the Canadian North American higher education system is broken. It does not produce the _educated_ people we need, so we have to import them. Too many young Canadians go to universities wherein they take programmes that, properly, even at the graduate school level, belong in _colleges_ ~ journalism and education come to mind. Equally there are too many "studies" programmes that provide what amounts to a post adolescent baby-sitting service, not an education. Meanwhile departments of mathematics, physics, chemistry and applied sciences depend on foreign students and on the Canadian children of recent immigrants.

We need to _strengthen_ the whole system, in my (less than professionally informed) opinion by:

     1. _Streaming_ youngsters into Academic (university bound), Vocational (community college bound) and General (apprenticeship or semi-skilled trades bound) programmes at about Grade 9 level;

     2. Making university entrance even harder, thus encouraging some (many) of the youngsters to pass through the Academic programme in high school to look to the community colleges for their future; and

     3. Importing foreign students to fill the gaps in our own children's levels of academic achievement ~ especially in our graduate school programmes.


----------



## Edward Campbell (19 Jan 2014)

Former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page gets the symptoms right in an opinion piece in the _Toronto Star_. He lists our economic woes as follows:



> [o]The Canadian economy is in trouble. GDP growth has been declining since the highs of 2010 (4 per cent) and now stands at 1.8 per cent. This is weak given the economy is operating well below its capacity. Weak growth makes it difficult to raise our labour market participation and employment rates.
> 
> [o]Our productivity growth, too, is weak. Since 2000, Canada’s business sector labour productivity averaged a meagre 0.8 per cent growth per year, about half the pace we saw over the 1981-2000 period. That’s particularly worrying when you consider that productivity is a key determinate of living standards.
> 
> ...




Now, one can quibble with bits of his list, but, broadly and generally, it is fair and accurate.

Then he goes completely off course with his cure. He doesn't propose any ways to fix anything about the economy, he say: _"we cannot overcome the pressing economic challenges before us without the concerted effort of our government institutions."_ In other words, in his own words: _"The time has come to launch a royal commission on the state of our institutions."_

No! The last thing Canada needs is the distraction of another slow, plodding, expensive Royal Commission. Ministers, federal and provincial, and business leaders and informed citizens need to propose ways to improve our national _productivity_ ~ interprovincial free trade would be a good start; to boost our exports ~ hello, "Northern Gateway" and "West > East" pipelines; to improve the _quality_ of our secondary and post secondary education ~ even at the expense of _quantity_; and to continue to contain inflation and government, in general.

The problems Mr Page lists are amenable to solutions; a Royal Commission isn't one of them.


----------



## Brad Sallows (20 Jan 2014)

>Feds to double number of international students

Short-sighted policy.  In the long term, sucking the best and brightest away from countries that desperately need them is not going to create a more secure community of nations.


----------



## Brad Sallows (20 Jan 2014)

>The problems Mr Page lists are amenable to solutions

I would start with getting the federal net balance into surplus and letting the cost of borrowing (interest rates) rise.


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## Edward Campbell (21 Jan 2014)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> >Feds to double number of international students
> 
> Short-sighted policy.  In the long term, sucking the best and brightest away from countries that desperately need them is not going to create a more secure community of nations.




Fair point, and very applicable to some of the countries listed: "China, Vietnam, India, Brazil, Mexico, and the Middle East-North Africa region, including Turkey." But, a handful of those "targeted, fast growing" countries, specifically China, India and, maybe, Vietnam, however, have *surpluses* of well educated people, too many for their economies to absorb in _productive_ capacities.

In so far as Brazil, Mexico and the Middle East-North Africa region is concerned, however, I agree with you and I oppose taking students from there with the intent that they, eventually, immigrate to Canada to enrich us at the expense of their homelands.


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## Edward Campbell (21 Jan 2014)

One of the factors that _hampers_ Canada's struggle for economic "relevance" is the economic "blindness"of our leaders. That's probably a bit unfair; it isn't that they are blind to what needs to be done, their _strategic vision_ is just obscured by the compelling need to get reelected which means pandering to every special interest group that comes down the pike. BC's Christie Clark is a good example as this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and mail_ points out:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/in-japan-an-lng-revolution-looks-to-canada/article16420312/#dashboard/follows/
My _emphasis_ added.


> In Japan, an LNG revolution looks to Canada
> 
> NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE
> TOKYO — The Globe and Mail
> ...




We, Canada, may already have missed the boat.


----------



## devil39 (21 Jan 2014)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> One of the factors that _hampers_ Canada's struggle for economic "relevance" is the economic "blindness"of our leaders. That's probably a bit unfair; it isn't that they are blind to what needs to be done, their _strategic vision_ is just obscured by the compelling need to get reelected which means pandering to every special interest group that comes down the pike. BC's Christie Clark is a good example as this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and mail_ points out:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/in-japan-an-lng-revolution-looks-to-canada/article16420312/#dashboard/follows/
> My _emphasis_ added.
> ...



Entirely possible.  I sometimes get the feeling that some Canadians, and their politicians, would rather have no jobs, if the option was to have energy industry, or industry spin off, jobs.  

Too busy dithering and pandering to special interest groups as you have stated.  

We may become increasingly stuck with trying to market our energy to the US, at a time where they appear to be becoming less dependent on foreign energy given their increasing success with unconventional natural gas development.


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## Edward Campbell (21 Jan 2014)

devil39 said:
			
		

> Entirely possible.  I sometimes get the feeling that some Canadians, and their politicians, would rather have no jobs, if the option was to have energy industry, or industry spin off, jobs.
> 
> Too busy dithering and pandering to special interest groups as you have stated.
> 
> We may become increasingly stuck with trying to market our energy to the US, at a time where they appear to be becoming less dependent on foreign energy given their increasing success with unconventional natural gas development.




It is very possible, even likely, that I have misunderstood or misinterpreted the data I have seen, but my understand ing is that US energy surpluses will be temporary things and it will, most likely, fall back into being net importer of energy in the 2030s.

If that's the case then Canada needs to pursue a long term strategy that remain _anchored_ in meeting US demand, because it is close, easy, familiar, friendly, (mostly) law abiding, and, and, and ... That doesn't mean we don't want to export to Asia; we do, for a whole host of good reasons, but the American market is as as close as damn is to swearing to being guaranteed in the long term.


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## GAP (21 Jan 2014)

> Canada needs to pursue a long term strategy that remain anchored in meeting US demand, because it is close, easy, familiar, friendly, (mostly) law abiding, and, and, and ... That doesn't mean we don't want to export to Asia; we do, for a whole host of good reasons, but the American market is as as close as damn is to swearing to being guaranteed in the long term.



We desperately need that Asian market. It is the only counter to being sucked dry by huge discounts we are giving just to get the oil to US market. 

Then, once they (the US), realize they are not the only buyer will we get a fairer price.


----------



## a_majoor (21 Jan 2014)

Speaking of energy, Ontario is learing the same, very painful lesson that Germany and the EU is learning about "Green" energy. By pandering to a particular special interest group (and playing crony capitalism footsie with the "Green" energy providers), Ontario has driven away hundreds fo thousands of manufacturing jobs, stuck Ontarians with some of the highest electricity prices in North America and inflicted massive damage to the economic balance sheet (paying $.135 kW/hr for wind energy, but having to dump it at $.04 kW/hr when the wind is blowing at off peak times, for example. During peak hours, if the wind is blowing, nuclear and thermal power plants have to vent steam, and hydro plants have to spill water to keep the Grid from crashing, and of course, very expensive natural gas "shoulder" plants have to be built and run on "hot idle" 24/7 to pick up the slack if the wind suddenly shifts or varies. Why the cost of two plants cancelled by the McGuinty government cost the Ontario taxpayer @ $500 million, although many documants are missing that could have given a clearer picture).

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european-commission-move-away-from-climate-protection-goals-a-943664.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=https://m.facebook.com



> *Green Fade-Out: Europe to Ditch Climate Protection Goals*
> 
> By Gregor Peter Schmitz in Brussels
> 
> ...



http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/01/20/an-economist-post-mortem-on-germanys-late-great-green-plan/



> *An Economist Post Mortem on Germany’s Late, Great Green Plan*
> 
> Germany’s turn towards green energy—its energiewende—cost consumers nearly $30 billion last year without actually making the country any greener. What exactly is this polysyllabic mess of an energy policy? The Economist explains:
> 
> ...



"*ut significant damage has already been done." Indeed. *


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## Edward Campbell (29 Jan 2014)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Before anyone throws a fit of snark and says this article is about the United States (it is), I want everyone to sit down and think about the corresponding situation(s) here. Canada has over $500 billion in federal public debt. Ontario alone has $200 billion in Provincial public debt (and rising rapidly), Quebec and virtually all the other provinces are in the same boat. Unfunded Federal liabilities are estimated to be another $500 billion (mostly pensions and benefits to federal workers), and while I have not been able to find collated figures for the provinces, there is little reason to think the situation is different. Municipalities add yet another toxic layer to this cake of indebtedness and unfunded liabilities.
> 
> So yes, if you are doing "the right things" to protect youself and families, the political class sees you as a target, and there is little doubt in my mind Canadian politicians are coming for your wealth too.
> 
> ...




More on this, but it is also related to this (Public Service Compensation and Benefits), and this (Canadian Federal Budget 2014) and even this (Politics in 2014), in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/rob-insight/ottawas-math-leaves-taxpayers-on-hook-for-pensions/article16556948/#dashboard/follows/


> Ottawa’s budget balancing may come with big pension asterisk
> 
> SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
> 
> ...




I know, I know ... this is about *accounting*, for gods' sake  :  and we want to read about military stuff!  :warstory:

Trust me, this matters to, eventually, the defence budget. There is an old ~ true ~ adage: "you can't manage what you can't measure." If we, the country, are not properly, accurately, measuring the costs of our pension _obligations_ then how can we claim to have a good handle on our budgeting processes?

I'm not sure which side is more accurate but there _might be_ somewhere between $4Billion and $14Billion "missing" from our national books ~ it's money you and I (and everyone else in Canada) owes but don't really know we owe. If we, the Canadian people, ever decide that the "taxpayer risk notion" is correct then we will want to, either:

     1. Increase taxes to bring the budget back into balance; or

     2. Cut spending ~ and we all know that the defence budget is always a prime target.

On a personal level, if you come down on the side of C.D. Howe president William Robson then you are, probably, saying, "I think the government needs to either *a)* pay me a slightly less generous pension when I retire, or *b)* deduct a bit more from my pay now."  :nod:


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## Edward Campbell (30 Jan 2014)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> To add a bit, I have attached a spreadsheet which is an index of indices. It shows the Top 10%/Top 20 in eight different categories: GDP (per capita), _transparency_ (an expression of least corrupt governments), economic freedom (an expression of protection of property right at law), _democracy_ (an expression of *liberal* democracy, including e.g. rights to freedom of speech and assembly), quality of life, _human development_, life expectancy (an indicator of public health) and defence spending.
> 
> Now I can be ~ should be ~ accused of "cooking the books" just a wee bit, but, in truth, those are the sorts of indices I follow.
> 
> ...




And the conservative (as Americans use ~ misuse ~ that term) _Heritage Foundation's_ Index of Economic Freedom for 2014 is out. Canada is in a respectable 6th place, behind Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand and well ahead of 12th place USA and 14th place UK.

The _Heritage Foundation_ says, "Over the 20-year history of the Index, Canada has advanced its economic freedom score by 10.7 points, the third biggest improvement among developed economies. Substantial score increases in seven of the 10 economic freedoms, including investment freedom, fiscal freedom, and the management of public spending, have enabled Canada to elevate its economic freedom status from “moderately free” 20 years ago to “free” today."

Now, many will argue that the _Heritage Foundation's_ definition of "economic freedom" equates to the near slavery for the poor (uneducated) and repression of e.g. the trade union movement.

I have spent a good deal of time, over the years, in Singapore and Hong Kong and I can see that some of their 'economic freedom' is, indeed, paid for by those who benefit least from it.


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## a_majoor (8 Feb 2014)

The appearance of this sort of technology is interesting to contemplate, since it essentially replaces "manufacturing" jobs with an entirely new paradigm. How many skilled workers will you need if entire aircraft assemblies, car frames or even buildings can be "printed" from a giant scale 3D print machine?

OTOH, since even large and complex things can be made far faster and for far less cost, there will be a massive deflationary pressure on the economy as well (compare the costs of a titanium part made on a 3D printer at $200,000 in 55 days vs $2,000,000 and two years delivery by conventional means). Canadian business needs to be aware of this, and governments will also have to change many of their assumptions about employment, revenues and finance to deal with the wide scale impact of this technology:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/02/3d-printing-huge-objects-will-impact.html



> *3D printing huge objects will impact the world economy not small hobbyist crap*
> 
> China is investing heavily in 3D printing, just like those in the U.S. and Europe.
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (21 Feb 2014)

I have commented a few times about the problems of _equality of opportunity_ that are created by unequal education systems and I have posited that the childre of the upper and middle classes attend schools that, for a whole host of reasons, are "better" than the schools available to most poor people and, consequently, do "better" in life. 

This 5 minute video which is linked from _The Economist_ web site is a bit shocking. It suggests that the children of middle class and, even more, upper (economic) class parents have a 'built in' advantage that equips them for success (or dooms their 'poor' confreres to failure) before they ever get to pre-school: their parents talk 'to' them!

Makes you think ... I hope.


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## Edward Campbell (22 Feb 2014)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the current edition of _The Economist_, are two articles that point out the problems Canada faces because of our 'special relationship' with the world's greatest ever economic power:

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21596960-avoid-another-crisis-fed-further-fragments-global-finance-inglorious


> Inglorious isolation
> *To avoid another crisis, the Fed further fragments global finance*
> 
> Feb 22nd 2014 | Washington, DC | From the print edition
> ...



And

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21596934-barack-obamas-unwillingness-fight-free-trade-expensive-mistake-how-make-world


> How to make the world $600 billion poorer
> *Barack Obama’s unwillingness to fight for free trade is an expensive mistake*
> 
> Feb 22nd 2014 | From the print edition
> ...




We must always remember that American policies do not exist to serve Canada's interests, much less the world's interests. They exist to, at their best, serve America's interests or, just as likely, to serve the narrow interests of one political constituency or another.

So it is with Ms. Yellen's (the Federal Reserve's) banking policies: they are designed to serve American monetary interests.

And so it is with President Obama and Senator Reid: their policies are designed to elect a handful of Democrats in a few hotly contested states or districts where trade matters.

The Fed's understandable, if wrong headed, monetary policy and the Democrat's equally understandable, if self destructive (for America), partisan political policies will hurt Canada ... they will hurt most of you because most of you have pension plans and all pension plans depend upon investments. Canadian banks are a major "earner" for pension plans as Canadian corporations that trade globally.

I remain a committed free trader. My reading of history teaches me that free (freer) trade always leads to greater general prosperity. But trade unions and socialists and nationalists ~ all of whom are, in my considered opinion, terminally f*cking stupid ~ oppose free trade so President Obama and Senator Reid who, as public servants of the highest rank, put their own partisan political interests far ahead of the national interests ... as do Republicans,  by the way.

Both the Fed and the US political leadership (bipartisanly inept) are on the wrong side of history.


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## a_majoor (24 Feb 2014)

True welfare reform may be to get rid of welfare altogether. Canada has followed the United States far down the Social Welfare State road, and I think the only thing that has kept us from falling into the deeper potholes they created is our smaller population has prevented a "critical mass" of artificially impoverished people from accumulating. Since the outcomes of the Great Society were known _in advance_ of the program's start (and known not from the gut feeling of knowledgable and experienced people but as a result of _empirical research_), I have a very strong suspicion that the elimination of poverty was not the desired outcome at all....

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=4923



> Why We Lost the War on Poverty
> By John C. Goodman  |  Posted: Tue. February 18, 2014, 11:12am PT
> 
> Take a look at the graph below. From the end of World War II until 1964 the poverty rate in this country was cut in half. Further, 94% of the change in the poverty rate over this period can be explained by changes in per capita income alone. Economic growth is clearly the most effective antipoverty weapon ever devised by man.
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (11 Mar 2014)

Those who follow my ramblings will not be surprised to know that I agree with the advice being offered to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/what-finance-is-telling-flaherty-about-cutting-taxes/article17415336/#dashboard/follows/
My emphasis added


> What Finance is telling Flaherty about cutting taxes
> 
> SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
> 
> ...




I would like to see corporate taxes and individual income taxes lowered further. I think two groups need lower income taxes: high income earners ~ those earning above $136,270 (I'm not one), and low income earners ~ those earning less than  $43,953.00 (I'm not one of those, either).

I think the employer's share of EI and CPP should be lowered for small businesses ~ those with less than, say, 10 full time employees.

How to raise new revenue to replace that which is "lost?" Do not increase the HST! Keeping the HST low restricts the growth of government. But we can afford a green/carbon tax IF it is very like the HST: it "flows through" all the middlemen and is, eventually and visibly paid by the end user, you and me every time we fill the car's gas tank, turn on our big screen TVs, buy groceries (which have to have been shipped from go alone knows where to the grocery store shelves) or heat/cool our homes. How big a tax? I have no idea ~ that's why we have smart bureaucrats in Finance.


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## Rifleman62 (11 Mar 2014)

BC Carbon Tax per liter goes into general revenue. The government states it has worked. Not many believe that. Just a tax grab. Are we not still paying a temporary levy per liter just to be used to reduce the deficit?

The more governments tax, the more they spend, and a lot is not wise spending. Most Manitobans don't realize that they live in a have not province and the NDP government is spending millions more than is coming in. There is no incentive to become a have province. Just take government welfare and spend.

http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/tbs/tp/climate/carbon_tax.htm



> The revenue-neutral carbon tax was implemented on July 1, 2008, and the final scheduled increase took effect on July 1, 2012.
> 
> The tax puts a price on carbon to
> 
> ...


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## Brad Sallows (12 Mar 2014)

I'm not sure "lost" revenue need be replaced, but if so, remove some of the miscellany of tax credits.  Simpler is better.  Regardless, I prefer to keep tax rates where they are and use every conceivable bit of surplus to retire debt obligations.  The lower the accumulated deficit, the more the room for deficit spending when the next recession arrives.


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## a_majoor (15 Mar 2014)

As experience around the globe has shown, it is always and absolutely a SPENDING problem. If Ontario has raised spending to match the growth of population and inflation during the McGuinty years while raising the same amounts of revenue as it did, then the province would be in a surplus position instead of adding $100 billion in debt. Just to confirm it, the Drummond report laid out the need for a 17% spending cut  by the Ontario government in order to stabilize the economy, eliminate the deficit and stop adding to the debt.

http://www.torontosun.com/2013/11/03/liberals-refuse-to-make-needed-spending-cuts to see how Ontarians are hurting, but like I said, this is world wide (look at the US or the EUzone for glaring examples).

On the Federal level, the Canadian government spends over $30 billion/year on subsidies to business, $30 billion/year on interest payments to the debt, @ $40 billion/year on transfers to other levels of government and something like $60 billion/year on transfers to individuals. Just changing the rules to tighten eligibility for these transfer payments would cut federal government spending by billions to tens of billions per year, and paying down the debt would also eliminate a huge cost to the taxpayer.

So no nattering about "lost" revenues please and more discussion and action to reduce spending in real terms, and at *all* levels of government.


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## a_majoor (15 Mar 2014)

And a message for anyone who (against all evidence) _still_ wants to promote Keynesian economics:

http://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2014/03/10/how-do-you-say-keynesian-failure-in-japanese/



> *How Do You Say Keynesian Failure” in Japanese?*
> Posted By Stephen Green On March 10, 2014 @ 12:36 pm In Uncategorized | 9 Comments
> 
> Remember how Japanese PM Shinzō Abe was going to be the guy to really, truly, and finally spend his country into prosperity? Well:
> ...



How do you say Keynesian failure in Japanese? ケインズ主義の失敗.


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## Edward Campbell (16 Mar 2014)

Almost everyone who argues _against_ Keynes (like almost everyone who argues for him) never finished the damned book.

There can be no doubt that one aspect of Keynes theory works: you can, do, reduce the deleterious human costs of recessions by spending. But that, spend your way out of a recession, is not what Keynes said, and even the part that he did say (public spending can mitigate some of the worst human costs of recessions) was only half of what he said.

Keynes also said that _stimulus spending_ must be limited to recessions. When the economy turns around we have to save: we have to cut spending.

Keynes' theory can work if, but only if all, every red cent, of stimulus is spent in _temporary_ ways, on projects that can be started and finished within the time frame of the recessions. By definition, _social spending_ cannot, ever, be used a stimulus because it never ends. Good, productive, stimulus spending includes things like repairing roads and bridges, building ferries (even warships, although they are less productive), adding laboratories to universities ~ all sorts of "bricks and mortar" and "metal bending" projects, in other words, that have finite durations (and costs). It is OK, for _stimulus_ to build a school, but it is not OK to hire teachers; it's OK to build a hospital but it's not OK to hire nurses. It is, clearly, OK to hire teachers and nurses when there is a demand ~ just not ever, not under any circumstance, as a _stimulus_ measure ... not unless you are terminally f_ucking stupid and have, therefore, been elected to political office.

If people would only, just read Keynes, please just one of you, I wouldn't get so bloody angry.


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## McG (24 Mar 2014)

Originally titled “Canada's voice in the world muted by an increasingly ineffective military,” this piece concludes that we need more military investment to establish our place in the world.  Smarter investment may be more important that more investment (what with heritage and nostalgia often receiving more effort that operational kit and removal of waste).  I am happy to see the title was changed.


> *Making Canada matter in the world*
> National Post
> Conrad Black
> 22 March 2014
> ...


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## a_majoor (28 Mar 2014)

Probably unwelcome news in view of the current Quebec election and a possible near term election in Ontario, but the FP nails why Canada's traditional engines of economic power are not pulling confederation, but are being towed behind. Dumping the current governments and reversing their agendas will do wonders for the provinces and for Canada as a whole:

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/03/26/whats-wrong-with-central-canada-outside-quebec-and-ontario-investment-in-canada-is-booming/



> *What’s wrong with Central Canada? Outside Quebec and Ontario, investment is booming*
> 
> Philip Cross, Special to Financial Post | March 26, 2014 9:16 AM ET
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (30 Mar 2014)

This could also go into the "Libertarians" thread, since this is an expression of unfettered use of property and evading "gatekeepers", which are major Libertarian ideas and ideals. Since the vast majority of people wo will purchase or use 3D printers will not be doing so with any political ideals in mind, but rather to get low cost, quality goods, this has more implications for the future of the Canadian economy and our standard of living (see highlighted paragraphs).

http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/24/the-3d-economy



> *The 3D Economy*
> 
> Greg Beato|Mar. 24, 2014 9:30 am
> 
> ...


----------



## McG (30 Mar 2014)

... So, what does that tell us about making Canada relevant?


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## a_majoor (31 Mar 2014)

MCG said:
			
		

> ... So, what does that tell us about making Canada relevant?



It means that all the time, money and resources that governments are putting into economic action plans, subsidization of industry, trying to attract new manufacturing jobs etc. is going to be wasted in the medium and long term, since the very foundation of the manufacturing economy is going to come apart. It also means the vast amounts of government spending will be even less sustainable, since many of the sources of tax income will evaporate.

It also means that *we* will still be fortunate, since the feedstocks of much of the new manufacturing processes (3D printing and related technologies) are available here from our own resource industry, and (so long as we don't fall into the Green energy trap) also have large energy resources to power these things.

 There will be one other huge change, which is deflation. If people can get by with a 3D printer, electrical energy and bags of raw materials picked up from the Home Depot or WalMart (I doubt commercial grade 3D printers will be able to use a shovel full of dirt), then their need for cash and desire to bid for goods and services in the market place will be reduced by a large fraction. As there will be needs that cannot be fulfilled by a "home" 3D printer, there will still be commerical transactions, but even they may be built around 3D printing (you send your design file to a larger, specialized fab), so costs will be much reduced.

So the bottom line is our economic foundations will change radically, which will also change the political institutions as well.


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## Edward Campbell (12 Apr 2014)

The _Shanghai Daily_ is reporting that "China and Australia yesterday voiced hopes of hastening negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement and striking a deal as soon as possible ... Meeting with visiting Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and entrepreneurs in Beijing, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang said economic and trade cooperation between the countries is now on the fast track."

According to the article "bilateral trade reached US$136.4 billion in 2013, up 11.5 percent on 2012."

Canada's trade with China is in the order of $70 Billion per year and it, like Australia's trade with China, has been growing at a steady rate.

But, we and Australia are similar in trade terms, and better access to Australia's resources will make Canada's resources less attractive, exacerbating our growing trade deficit with China.

China needs to be Canada's primary target for a trade agreement.


----------



## a_majoor (12 Apr 2014)

Rather than putting all my trade eggs into a single (and potentially unfriendly) basket, I would focus more on the TPP process if I was responsible for this file. Still, we did sign a free trade deal with the ROK, so Canada isn't being left out in the cold.


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## Edward Campbell (28 Apr 2014)

Here are links to two useful articles that explain, lucidly, the counter argument; both are by Alex Himelfarb, former Clerk of the Privy Council and Jordan Himelfarb, the _Star’s_ opinion page editor and co-editors of _Tax Is Not a Four-Letter Word_:

     1. Canada’s dangerously distorted tax conversation published in the _Toronto Star_ in Oct 13; and

     2. Without a tax debate, we risk sleepwalking into the future, published, also in the _Toronto Star_, today.

Both are worth a read because both Himelfarbs are very smart people and both have a lot of influence, especially in the Liberal Party of Canada and amongst the _Laurentian elites_.

The Himelfarbs deserve credit for defining us, those of us favouring smaller, less intrusive and less costly governments, as _neo-liberals_. (We are not _neo-cons_, as that term is used in the USA; in fact, I suspect most of us _neo-liberals_ look down our noses at the bumptious, ill educated American _neo-cons_ with their silly, Grover Norquist, no new taxes mantra coupled with big spending plans.)

I also agree with the Himelfarbs that we do need a coherent national debate on taxes. Such a debate must begin with a debate on the appropriate roles and, therefore, size of government. My guess is that most (75%+) of Canadians are _big government_ people; they believe that government spending, funded by taxes, creates jobs, for example - and they _believe_ that because, sometimes, it's partially true ... it's not true that it _creates_ jobs but properly focused, _Keynesian_ spending in economic hard times can and does prevent unemployment.

I think (hope?) we all agree that taxes are necessary - not a necessary evil, just necessary to civilized society. The issue is: how do we (our elected governments) spend the money? Look at this list. Are you sure that every single one of them is necessary and productive? I am *absolutely certain** that we could cut 10% of them and actually improve the productivity of government; a cut of 15% would be better and I think cuts would have to exceed 25% before we saw any real, measurable ill effects. The Himelfarbs would, I'm equally sure, disagree ~ it's not that they would oppose every single cut, but they are committed to the notion of a big, active, intrusive government that manages almost every aspect of society. I favour a small, somewhat remote government that, in large measure, leaves people (and their property) alone to make the best of their own lives, intruding, of course, when people need some help. (I'm not totally heartless and I do not advocate a wholesale attack on the welfare state.)*


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## Brad Sallows (28 Apr 2014)

>bumptious, ill educated American neo-cons with their silly, Grover Norquist, no new taxes mantra coupled with big spending plans.

I think you might be confusing American neo-conservatives with some other faction.  Agree or disagree with their foreign policy (democracy promotion) principles, they can boast of some heavyweight thinkers, and their fiscal policy tends to reflect their origins: Democrats disaffected with Democratic foreign and fiscal policy.  They are not overzealous deficit fighters or spenders.


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## Edward Campbell (29 Apr 2014)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> >bumptious, ill educated American neo-cons with their silly, Grover Norquist, no new taxes mantra coupled with big spending plans.
> 
> I think you might be confusing American neo-conservatives with some other faction.  Agree or disagree with their foreign policy (democracy promotion) principles, they can boast of some heavyweight thinkers, and their fiscal policy tends to reflect their origins: Democrats disaffected with Democratic foreign and fiscal policy.  They are not overzealous deficit fighters or spenders.



Look at this graph:





Source: http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44521-LTBO2013_0.pdf

It can be argued that, in the early 1940s, America, indeed the whole US led West faced an existential threat, one might even argue the same for the 1960s when the US debt declined, when measured as a percentage of GDP, but that was not the case from 2005 until now. Anyone who *a)* signed Grover Norquist's _pledge_ (that's many, many US legislators and candidates, and there's nothing wrong with not raising taxes) and *b)* doesn't campaign for massive, across the board spending cuts, including for the Pentagon, is a "bumptious, ill educated" fool. The problem is you cannot hold the line on taxes and propose sustaining anything like the current levels of government activity. 

The US public debt now exceeds $17 Trillion, which is more than 100% of GDP. Foreigners, including China, are owed more than $5 Trillion of that debt. That's too much. The biggest threat to America's future is America's _present_. American legislators ~ exactly like their Canadian counterparts ~ are guilty of listening to their constituents, of giving them what they want, rather than of leading.


----------



## Edward Campbell (29 Apr 2014)

Colin Robertson offers some useful and timely advice in this opinion piece which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/world-insider/rather-than-get-even-canada-needs-to-get-smart-on-keystone/article18319477/#dashboard/follows/?click=drive


> Rather than get even, Canada needs to get smart on Keystone
> 
> SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
> 
> ...




I think his three points: *1.* "We need to recalibrate our game," *2.* We need to educate American legislators, including candidates for office, and *3.* We need to "engage more at the state level – targeting state legislators and, especially governors," are all good, but the big point I take away is that we must press on with East > West Coast and West > East Coast pipelines to open the world to our resources.


----------



## Fishbone Jones (29 Apr 2014)

Simplistic and undoable I know,

But I think we should just turn off the taps for a couple of weeks.

Pretty hard to rag the puck when there's no ice


----------



## Edward Campbell (29 Apr 2014)

recceguy said:
			
		

> Simplistic and undoable I know,
> 
> But I think we should just turn off the taps for a couple of weeks.
> 
> Pretty hard to rag the puck when there's no ice




I understand the frustration with President Obama and e.g. the _Tides Foundation_ and so on, just as you understand, recceguy, the futility of your idea ... but, futile or not, it's a bad idea. (Which is why I'm replying, because others might not understand as well as you do.)

Three points ...

     First: As Colin Robertson reminds us the US matters to us. It matters far, far more than any other country ... it matters more than any of our provinces because it accounts for fully ⅓ of our economic output.

     Second: We are a trading nation and we want to be a bigger and better one; the very worst thing we could do for our reputation as a reliable trading partner would be to try ~ and we would, certainly, fail ~ to punish a customer. 

     Third: Oil is a fungible commodity - there is a global supply and it is an (almost) free and fair market. If we stop production the only effects will be a temporary rise in prices and the diversion of some tankers. The American people would
     hardly notice ... not enough to force a change in policy.

We need to be smarter ... with the Americans, to be sure, but, more importantly with ourselves: with provinces, with first nations, with interest groups and so on. Building pipelines is not a major engineering challenge, it is a public relations and economic and political challenge.


----------



## GAP (29 Apr 2014)

Besides, retaliating by cutting off the oil only plays into the "Ban the Tar Sands" crowd's mantra....it's more fun to see them frustrated....


----------



## Brad Sallows (29 Apr 2014)

The "bumptious, ill educated American neo-cons" are no worse than the Blue team, then.  At no point during the brief period they held sufficient votes to pass anything they wanted did they pass the tax increases (which they have whined about incessantly) necessary to support desired levels of spending.

The US deficit was -$158B in 2002, -$378B in 2003, -$413B in 2004, -$319B in 2005, -$248B in 2006, and -$161B in 2007.  In 2006 and 2007 I was reading articles projecting a surplus in 2008 and 2009.  The US doesn't have a tax rate problem: it has a spending problem, and an employment suppression problem.


----------



## Edward Campbell (4 May 2014)

Our economy is inextricably linked to the USA; trade with America is worth more, to every Canadian province, than is inter-provincial trade; we are, in many, many respects the 51st, 52nd, 53rd, 54th and 55th American states (ON, The Prairies, BC, QC and Atlantic Canada in that order according to recent data); the flow of trade between Canada and the USA is unprecedented in world history; it is vital to both countries ... so, consider this, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/us-business/detroit-windsor-bridge-could-become-canadas-white-elephant/article18454586/#dashboard/follows/


> Why the Detroit-Windsor bridge could become Canada’s white elephant
> 
> BARRIE MCKENNA
> OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
> ...




The key, it seems to me, is these two sentences: "But politics, rather than legal niceties, may be the real reason for the plaza controversy. The money has become caught up in partisan budget wrangling in Washington and nasty U.S. midterm elections, coming up in November."

Althoug Canada does need the bridge more than does the USA, the Americans still do need it, but, as is so often the case in the 21st century, _official Washington_ is screwing _Main Street_.


----------



## Edward Campbell (9 May 2014)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page gets the symptoms right in an opinion piece in the _Toronto Star_. He lists our economic woes as follows:
> 
> 
> Now, one can quibble with bits of his list, but, broadly and generally, it is fair and accurate.
> ...




I almost hesitate to post this because I'm reasonably certain that a couple of folks will, incorrectly, accuse me of "union bashing," and I will, yet again, have to explain why unions perform a useful function in our free market system but why public sector _labour_ is badly led and managed. I worry, a lot, about _productivity_ and I point out, again and again, that Canada's (relatively) poor productivity is not about lazy or overpaid workers, it is about timid, branch plant _*management*_. I see that Canada has two big advantages in the _productivity_ race: a fair (not good) public health care system ~ it needs a lot of HUGE changes, but it is very, very much on the right track, especially compared to the USA ~ and an OK, but not good public education system. The latter is, actually, more important to productivity than the former. 

So, with that disclaimer, here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is an article that highlights one of the problems with our public education system:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/imagine-the-uproar-if-we-weeded-out-bad-teachers/article18565795/#dashboard/follows/


> Imagine the uproar if we weeded out bad teachers
> 
> GARY MASON
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




I can recall when, a couple of generations ago, teachers self identified as _professionals_ and they were regarded, in the community, as _professionals_. Somehow, over some time, they _morphed_ into unionized "education workers." It ought not to surprise them that the public, generally - not totally, just generally - regards them as unionized "workers," on a par with, say, plumbers. The public education system is a key component to a modern, _civilized_, productive society. It needs to work efficiently and, above all, effectively: part of _operational effectiveness_, in any enterprise, involves having the _right_ inputs. The key inputs to education are: curriculum and teachers. It is madness, to be charitable, to suggest that there are not, always, some (not many, just some) bad teachers and some more who are less than adequate. The system must be allowed to fire the bad ones, for cause, and retrain the less than adequate ones. Teachers' unions are counter-productive.


----------



## Brad Sallows (10 May 2014)

The chief problem with the teaching profession in Canada is that teachers have failed to separate the bargaining unit function and the professional oversight function into distinct and adversarial organizations.


----------



## Edward Campbell (21 May 2014)

There is an interesting report with some _insider information, maybe just gossip_, in the _Ottawa Citizen_ about Prime Minister Harper wanting to shuffle Jim Flaherty out of Finance and into Industry and moving Jim Prentice into Finance back around 2007.

I think Prime Minister Harper also saw the _ideal_ of an _inner cabinet_ - the sort of thing that existed, albeit informally, in the King/St Laurent eras.

The _inner cabinet_ is:

     Prime Minister - controls _strategy_ on all fronts, aided by  the Clerk of the Privy Council and a _political_ PMO;
          Finance Minister - makes the long term fiscal plan;
          Industry Minister - implements the long term plan in the mid to short term (that's why moving from Finance to Industry makes some sense);
          Treasury Board - _manages_ the plan in the near term;
          Foreign Affairs - presents Canada to the world; and
          Justice - keeps the laws of the land moving in step with society's changes.

Defence is not there - while it's a big spending department it only really matters in a war and then one will likely have, in addition to the _inner cabinet_, a _war cabinet_:

     Prime Minister;
          Defence Minister;
                Chief of the Defence Staff is a _de facto_ member in his (or her) role as the PM's military advisor;
          Industry Minister;
          Foreign Minister;
          Minister of Supply; and
          Minister (maybe ministers) of Resources.

The idea of an _inner cabinet_ is based on the established notion that one person's (the PM's in this case) effective span of control is less than 10, maybe only five. There are books, even libraries written about that in the _management_ domain but they are, pretty much, all based on what we, as sailors, soldiers and air force members, have seen/experienced ever since we joined. Our basic structure is built upon small teams, and teams of teams and so on. (When I was a CO I always asked my "O Gp" to arrange themselves at the table so that the four sub-unit OCs sat on one side and the four main staff people (Ops O, adjutant, QM, and RSM) sat at the other - the DCO say at the other end, across from me. I did that, as I told them, to make sure that *I never forgot* that we had a _chain of command_ and a _control_ system. It's too easy, in my experience, for commanders to rely too much on the staff, on the _control_ system, because it is omnipresent.)


----------



## Edward Campbell (21 May 2014)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I almost hesitate to post this because I'm reasonably certain that a couple of folks will, incorrectly, accuse me of "union bashing," and I will, yet again, have to explain why unions perform a useful function in our free market system but why public sector _labour_ is badly led and managed. I worry, a lot, about _productivity_ and I point out, again and again, that Canada's (relatively) poor productivity is not about lazy or overpaid workers, it is about timid, branch plant _*management*_. I see that Canada has two big advantages in the _productivity_ race: a fair (not good) public health care system ~ it needs a lot of HUGE changes, but it is very, very much on the right track, especially compared to the USA ~ and an OK, but not good public education system. The latter is, actually, more important to productivity than the former.
> 
> So, with that disclaimer, here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is an article that highlights one of the problems with our public education system:
> 
> ...




This report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Times_ will enrage teachers' unions and those who oppose _standardized testing_ because it might lower children's 'self esteem:'

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/e512db9c-c643-11e3-ba0e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz32J5XZxKK


> Countries that excel at problem-solving encourage critical thinking
> 
> By Jeevan Vasagar
> 
> ...




Mathematics may be the most _creative_ of all academic disciplines but it cannot be used _creatively_ unless and until one has mastered the basics, which does require some "rote learning." We tend to think of Asian _creativity_ as being stifled, firmly rooted in the Confucian era, but that's not the case ... East Asia, Sinic Asia is home to a thriving and vey modern arts/design community. the East Asians still try to balance "rote learning," because their languages require it (just try to learn to write Chinese without using rote memory), along with problem solving and _creativity_. Maybe we shouldn't be quite so quick to dismiss their approach.


----------



## Edward Campbell (23 May 2014)

You're probably going to hear a lot, again, about Prof Thomas Piketty; he's visiting Canada, promoting his book - a runaway best seller -  ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century.’ He'll be appearing on CBC and will, almost certainly be the darling of the anti-American/anti-capitalist crowd there.

There are a few problems with Prof Piketty's book (which I have not read and which I do not plan to read) according to reviewers in e.g. the _Financial Times_ and _The Economist_:

     1. He mixes up _capital_ and land;

     2. He assumes, in a _Marxist_ manner, that the future must be like the past; and

     3. He does that because his book is, essentially, a restatement of the popular _soft Marxist_ orthodoxy which is, demonstrably, wrong.

Now, the _Financial Times_, having done a thorough analysis of the data Prof Piketty published concludes, in a fairly damning little essay, that he got his sums wrong.  :-[


----------



## CougarKing (25 May 2014)

What's ironic is that for all the naysaying and predictions of doom predicted about Keystone XL by many so-called environmentalists on the left, a pipeline is actually safer than shipping than by rail cars simply because the latter can cause deadly, potentially explosive, oil spills when a train derails. I seem to recall a Maclean's article that stressed that very point from last year or earlier.

Canadian Press via MSN



> *Keystone XL company's Plan B: a 'rail bridge'*
> 
> WASHINGTON - Frustrated by yet another regulatory delay, the company behind the stalled Keystone XL pipeline project is delivering a message in the U.S. capital: it's getting involved in the rail business.
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (14 Jun 2014)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Almost everyone who argues _against_ Keynes (like almost everyone who argues for him) never finished the damned book.
> 
> There can be no doubt that one aspect of Keynes theory works: you can, do, reduce the deleterious human costs of recessions by spending. But that, spend your way out of a recession, is not what Keynes said, and even the part that he did say (public spending can mitigate some of the worst human costs of recessions) was only half of what he said.
> 
> ...




This morning, on _CBC Radio's "The House"_ former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge, one of the smartest men in Canada - head and shoulders smarter than any elected politician at any level, and smarter than 99% of the senior civil servants who advise all those politicians - will argue *for* more _Keynesian_ stimulus: but he will argue, very very specifically, for *infrastructure* spending: e.g. yes to Kathleen Wynne's plan to spend several billions on transit, for example, but no to additional social spending.

I'm not sure how he will come down on the Ontario premier's plan for an _Ontario Retirement Pension Plan_, which would be mandatory for those who don't already have a workplace plan. In fact I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it: I, generally, want to see people save more for their own retirement, but I think I would rather see enhancements to the RRSP system, including, *perhaps*, very small employer contributions (maybe something <0.5% of payroll under, say, $60,000.0) for employees who do not have pension plans but who do contribute to a RRSP. But I also think that the very best way to address the problems that Ontario, for example, faces, is to _grow_ the economy - which is why I know I will agree with David Dodge about some additional stimulus - stimulus focused, exclusively, on infrastructure, especially on maintenance of existing infrastructure but also on new public transit projects.


Edited to add:


Here, in Bennett Jones Spring 2014 Economic Outlook, is the substance of David Dodge's views. (Mr Dodge is a Senior Advisor at _Bennett Jones_.)

Mr (Prof or Dr if you prefer) Dodge is very clear: we must restrain _current_ spending, which is, mainly social spending, but he advocates long term (30-50 year) borrowing, now, at low rates, for long lived (30 to 50 years) infrastructure. He also advocates tolls for roads and bridges and ports, and, and, and ... to help pay the interest on those loans.


----------



## a_majoor (14 Jun 2014)

While infrastructure spending is (or at least was) the primary job of governments in the early to mid 20th century, governments have generally "walked away" from infrastructure and focused on social spending, transfer payments and various "feel good" initiatives. Since governments (at all levels) tend to change the meanings of words, we have seen (and no doubt will continue to see) civic auditoriums, ice rinks and convention centres pawned off as "infrastructure", while spending on current consumption (wages mostly) suddenly becomes "investment".

At a minimum, instead of giving governments more money to piss away, tell them they need to pay for their infrastructure needs out of existing budgets, and the rest of the stuff can be paid out of whatever is left over.


----------



## Edward Campbell (18 Jun 2014)

Martha Hall Findlay (the best leader the Liberal party of Canada never had?) brings some much needed good sense to the _Northern Gateway_ debate in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/northern-gateway-you-dont-build-a-nation-by-saying-no/article19215073/#dashboard/follows/
My emphasis added.


> Northern Gateway: You don’t build a nation by saying ‘No’
> 
> MARTHA HALL FINDLAY
> Contributed to The Globe and Mail
> ...




The concerns about the environment are real, valid and must be addressed. *But* some (almost all) BC politicians and some aboriginal leaders are nothing but paid shills for e.g. the _Tides Foundation_ and they are, _de facto_ acting contrary to Canada's best interests ~ they are, in other words, and I'm being charitable, third rate Canadians.


----------



## Edward Campbell (18 Jun 2014)

The US _recovery_ remains anemic. The FOMC* has just revised its growth forecast down, again, this time to 2.2% from 2.25% at the last meeting. 

Why does that matter?

Because the Canadian economy is (too) deeply and (too) broadly dependent on US markets - whes the US grows we grow, when the US stagnates or shrinks we stagnate or shrink.

_____
* Federal Open Market Committee is the primary _market_ policy body of the Federal Reserve. It's 12 members comprise all seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; and four of the remaining eleven Reserve Bank presidents, who serve one-year terms on a rotating basis. It meets eight times a year. Janet Yellin is the Chair.


----------



## Kirkhill (18 Jun 2014)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Martha Hall Findlay (the best leader the Liberal party of Canada never had?) brings some much needed good sense to the _Northern Gateway_ debate in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:
> 
> Maybe Young Justin will blow away in the breeze after the next election and she'll get a shot after he takes the Trudeaumaniacs with him.
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (18 Jun 2014)

From my limited exposure, Martha Hall Findlay's positions on various things would have sounded perfectly at home coming from the mouth of Jim Flarety or Prime Minister Harper. I believe Edward would say she is a "Blue" or Manley Liberal.

Perhaps one of the things the current government could do is to take her aboard to produce something "non partisan" to support the Northern Gateway or eliminating price supports, much like they did with the Manley Report on our mission to Afghanistan.

As for the post 2015 Liberals, I don't think they have the depth in the benches to come up with a viable leadership candidate, nor do I think a transitive party like the Liberals in their current form can attract any heavyweights any more. After all, no one knows "what" they stand for, and hence what positions are actually "Liberal" (don't forget Martha Hall Findlay's opponent in the leadership race was Marc Garneau, who's positions on the issues could have been spoken by Jack Layton or Tom Mulcair. What was "Liberal" about either candidate's platform?). The Young Dauphin may remain as the "Middle Aged Dauphin" after claiming victory over the NDP by squeezing a few seats out of Quebec, then have to face whoever is selected to succeed Prime Minister Harper (hopefully a young, energetic leader) in 2019.


----------



## Edward Campbell (27 Jun 2014)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> This morning, on _CBC Radio's "The House"_ former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge, one of the smartest men in Canada - head and shoulders smarter than any elected politician at any level, and smarter than 99% of the senior civil servants who advise all those politicians - will argue *for* more _Keynesian_ stimulus: but he will argue, very very specifically, for *infrastructure* spending: e.g. yes to Kathleen Wynne's plan to spend several billions on transit, for example, but no to additional social spending.
> 
> I'm not sure how he will come down on the Ontario premier's plan for an _Ontario Retirement Pension Plan_, which would be mandatory for those who don't already have a workplace plan. In fact I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it: I, generally, want to see people save more for their own retirement, but I think I would rather see enhancements to the RRSP system, including, *perhaps*, very small employer contributions (maybe something <0.5% of payroll under, say, $60,000.0) for employees who do not have pension plans but who do contribute to a RRSP. But I also think that the very best way to address the problems that Ontario, for example, faces, is to _grow_ the economy - which is why I know I will agree with David Dodge about some additional stimulus - stimulus focused, exclusively, on infrastructure, especially on maintenance of existing infrastructure but also on new public transit projects.
> 
> ...




More about _infrastructure_ spending, albeit in America, in this article which si reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Economist_:

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21605932-country-where-everyone-drives-america-has-shoddy-roads-bridging-gap


> Bridging the gap
> *For a country where everyone drives, America has shoddy roads*
> 
> Jun 28th 2014
> ...




One thing that happened, in Canada and the USA, was that after the _infrastructure_ spending 'booms' of the 1950s and (early) '60s, we confused spending priorities and assumed that _social_ spending would, could have the same benefits as hard _infrastructure_ spending. It didn't because it couldn't. In fact, while _infrastructure_ can be a value multiplier, most social spending is, almost always, a net drag on the _"commonwealth."_

But social spending is very, very hard to stop or even to slow; social programmes just keeps consuming greater and greater shares of municipal, provincial/state and national governments' budgets, squeezing out _productive_ infrastructure construction and, especially, maintenance. It has to stop ... eventually. But it will take a politician of extraordinary vision and courage to do it, people like ...






   and


----------



## Edward Campbell (30 Jun 2014)

Here are links to two articles that discuss the implications for _First Nations_, specifically for pipelines, but also for the BC economy, in general, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the Tsilhqot’in Nation case:

     "In spite of all the hand-wringing about threats to resource development and the land mass of B.C., this is a big victory for governments ... in the unanimous 8-0 decision, which dismissed with nary a nod the last half century of strident native
      assertions of sovereignty, the high court said B.C. natives are not unlike any other litigant squatter," opines the _Vancouver Sun_; and

     "The Supreme Court’s Tsilhqot’in Nation decision marks a very dark day for the economy of British Columbia," says Gordon Gibson in an article in the _Globe and Mail_.


----------



## Edward Campbell (30 Jun 2014)

I _guess_ that this _might_ belong here; it is in the category of "disruptors" about which our friend Thucydide has written now and again and about which e.g. CNBC regularly reminds us, but this is not _Space X_ or _Etsy_ (I have used the latter two or three times and was entirely satisfied each time, by the way), rather is is about established giants, the Detroit based auto industry, and a new Internet giant, _Google_ and the future of the automobile: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/google-detroit-reach-fork-in-the-road-to-self-driving-cars/article19389917/#dashboard/follows/

_Google_ wants to change the way _urban man_ moves about.







For 100 years or more Detroit has _driven_ us in one direction (pun intended): the driver controlled, private automobile. Now _Google_ wants an automatic _public_ (it will, essentially, be _public_ because it will require _public_ infrastructure and regulation) _custom_ transport system.

In some respects this is like the green tax discussion. It doesn't impact on some of us ... only on those (a majority, in fact) who live in urban/suburban cities and towns.

I can well imagine that there is a lot of heartburn in Mountain View, Detroit and, especially, in Wall Street, the City and HK where bankers will have to make some bold decisions ... something most bankers, in my (limited) experience are loath to do.

Someone, somewhere, is going to get very rich by backing the right horse ... I wonder if that someone is Canadian in somewhere like, say, Waterloo or Kanata or Richmond, BC.


----------



## a_majoor (3 Jul 2014)

Greens and American groups like the Tides Foundation regularly play aboriginal theatre in order to try to influence the debate against developing hydrocarbon energy sources or transportation systems like pipelines. This article from Australia shows that some in that aboriginal community understand what is going on. I wonder how long it will take for most Canadian aboriginals to catch on to what is really happening:

http://www.afr.com/p/opinion/green_groups_keep_aboriginal_people_dyQc0k0oqQYyVwUpl7qhLM



> *Green groups keep Aboriginal people in poverty*
> PUBLISHED: 02 JUL 2014 00:05:00 | UPDATED: 02 JUL 2014 15:49:06
> 
> The greatest threat to their languages and culture, their way of life and their desire to live on country, is the inability to build a real economy.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (3 Jul 2014)

CBC journalist Kathleen Petty takes a look at the politics of greed and envy that surround the energy sector in Canada in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _CBC News/Calgary_:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/the-fragile-power-of-alberta-s-golden-goose-economy-1.2694627?cmp=rss


> ANALYSIS: The fragile power of Alberta's golden goose economy
> *The environmental debate would be easier if the national economy wasn't so lopsided*
> 
> By Kathleen Petty, CBC News
> ...




When I watch the interprovincial rivalries, part of Ms Petty's "delicate dance" I am reminded of an old Russian story about a poor peasant who had only one cow but who, on his way to the fields, passed his neighbour's farm where there were two cows. Each day the peasant went to church, each day the envy grew and festered in his heart, and each day he fell to his knees and prayed, "Please, God, kill one of my neighbour's cows!" That's about the state of play amongst Canadians, isn't it?


----------



## Kirkhill (3 Jul 2014)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> For 100 years or more Detroit has _driven_ us in one direction (pun intended): the driver controlled, private automobile. Now _Google_ wants an automatic _public_ (it will, essentially, be _public_ because it will require _public_ infrastructure and regulation) _custom_ transport system.
> 
> In some respects this is like the green tax discussion. It doesn't impact on some of us ... only on those (a majority, in fact) who live in urban/suburban cities and towns.
> 
> ...



Are we sure that the solution will be a public one?

Fire prevention - the ultimate public service - started off as a privately funded service offered to customers by insurance companies to protect their mutual stake in property.

Turnpikes and tollroads - the tradition continues unabated

Gated communities.

I think you could make a business case for a privately financed Google Transportation Network with gated communities being connected by purpose built toll routes (at, below or above grade) or possibly with intervening aerial and maritime ferries.

The Design Basis for a Google driven net may give you routes that look more like monorail and skytrain systems than conventional systems.  Toronto's Gardiner and Seattle's Over/Under expressway may end up taking up less space and carrying higher traffic flows.


----------



## Edward Campbell (3 Jul 2014)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> Are we sure that the solution will be a public one?
> 
> Fire prevention - the ultimate public service - started off as a privately funded service offered to customers by insurance companies to protect their mutual stake in property.
> 
> ...




I take your point, certainly, but I don't think _public_ = *government*. I have argued, pretty steadily, for very, very small, limited government. I don't want _public_ services to disappear; I just don't want governments to operate them. I think, today, about e.g. _public_ transit in some (most?) Japanese cities which is privately operated as a _public_ utility, and _public_ hospitals in most countries which are privately operated. I can easily envisage a _public_ transport system that operates on a privately owned (pay for use) network. It _might_ start as something like existing _pay for use car services_ using 'driverless cars' on 'dedicated' lanes on city streets (for which the private service provider pays the cash strapped city) ... we have dedicated bus lanes, dedicated 'high occupancy' lanes, dedicated bike lanes, why not dedicated _automatic tranport_ lanes?


----------



## Kirkhill (3 Jul 2014)

I see you now.

My error on conflating Public with Government.  It is something I will have to fight against.

As I think about it I am struck by how much things have changed over the last 50 years.

When I left the worker's paradise in Britain tied to my mother's apron strings Britain was largely adhering to the plan developed by Labour and the Government was in control and NHS for everyone.

Yet the buses we rode on were not all "corporation" (meaning municipal) buses.  Not all dustmen worked for the corporation.  Doctors, nurses and hospitals were all independent agents that received payment from the Government acting as third party insurer.  My glasses were purchased at private opticians although "free NHS" glasses were also available from the same outlets.  My grandparents transferred hard coin that they received in a paper pay packet by hand from their employers to the insurance company's agent who weekly walked the route and picked up the little brown envelopes.

Almost all the "government provided" services started out as private services that governments nationalized as they tried to buy the good life for everybody with other people's money.  But if everybody gets everything for free who pays?


----------



## Edward Campbell (25 Jul 2014)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ is an excellent opinion piece by Gregory Thomas of the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/oliver-is-right-to-reject-calls-for-fiscal-irresponsibility/article19765771/#dashboard/follows/


> Oliver is right to reject calls for fiscal irresponsibility[/url]
> 
> GREGORY THOMAS
> Contributed to The Globe and Mail
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (26 Jul 2014)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> A look at some of the drags on the system which limit Canadian productivity. This is something the government could start highlighting as a means of preparing the battlespace for 2015 and beyond:
> 
> http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/06/04/the-euro-loonie/




The _Globe and Mail_ reports that "Germany is to reject a multi-billion free trade deal between the European Union and Canada", the report say that "Berlin objects to clauses outlining the legal protection offered to firms investing in the 28-member bloc. Critics say they could allow investors to stop or reverse laws." This is very similar to the provisions of Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement which allows companies in one NAFTA country to sue the government of another NAFTA country for “regulatory expropriation.” That can be interpreted to mean a loss of value to the company — such as lower profits — due to actions taken by the government." It was an American demand and it is part of the US proposal in the EU/US free trade negotiations.

My expectation is that the Germans will propose a solution to the CETA that will be acceptable to Canada and will form the base for the EU/US talks.


Edit to add:

There is a further report in the _Glob and Mail_ suggesting that some renegotiation of details will be necessary (the _Good Grey Globe's_ reporter is a bit hysterical   anic:  ) the key is, in the words of trade consultant Peter Clark, at the very end of the article:

          ‎       "The message is that Germany ... is not going to submit itself to NAFTA Type Chapter 11 investor state arbitration ... in their view there is nothing wrong with German courts and foreigners
                  should not have different rights than Germans."

The real message is being sent to the USA, not Canada. My assessment (worth what you'r paying for it) is that Germany wants a (slightly modified) deal with Canada to use as a template in the EU/USA negotiations.


----------



## Edward Campbell (30 Jul 2014)

More on the CETA, including its _potential_ impact on Prime Minister Harper's political future and on the _global_ economy, in this opinion piece which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/why-a-canada-europe-deal-is-crucial-to-global-trade/article19819650/#dashboard/follows/


> Why a Canada-Europe deal is crucial to global trade
> 
> JOHN IBBITSON
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




I agree, broadly, with Mr Ibbitson and I agree, equally broadly, with Chancellor's Merkel's position re: ISDS (investor-state dispute settlement, AKA NAFTA Chapter 11). Canada agreed to Chapter 11 because, with very good reason, we don't trust the US Congress to obey its own laws or to honour treaties ... and the Americans don't trust any foreigners. Chancellor Merkel will not, in my opinion, cede any German _political_ sovereignty to any court, not even a German one, so, given that she wants (needs) a EU-USA free trade deal, she will be keen to negotiate a deal with Canada that will satisfy her minimum demands and serve as a template for the Americans. "This is what we gave Canada," she wants to say, "we will give you Americans no more."


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## GAP (30 Jul 2014)

That's all well and good, but with some of the governments out there we intend to trade with, there has to be something to protect/dispute issues for our businesses. 

opening ourselves to other government whims/wishes is likely to be a real pratfall....


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## Edward Campbell (30 Jul 2014)

GAP said:
			
		

> That's all well and good, but with some of the governments out there we intend to trade with, there has to be something to protect/dispute issues for our businesses.
> 
> opening ourselves to other government whims/wishes is likely to be a real pratfall....




Quite right. There has to be _something_, but ISDS/Chapter 11 is too rich for Germany's blood and I suspect it will be the same for other major economic powers. The trick is to find the compromise that satisfies Canada, can be swallowed by the USA and meets Germany's minimum demands.


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## a_majoor (11 Aug 2014)

More on US interests trying to cripple Canada:

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/08/08/peter-foster-green-billionaires-undermining-canada/



> *Peter Foster: Green billionaires undermining Canada*
> 
> Peter Foster | August 8, 2014 9:49 AM ET
> More from Peter Foster
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (21 Aug 2014)

The CMA is, according to an article in the _Globe and Mail_, "calling out the government of Stephen Harper for its inaction on health care, saying the medicare system is floundering and Canadians are “tired of excuses as to why the federal government can’t take action [and]  Canada’s health system ranks next to last (after the United States) on virtually every measure of quality and access."

Dr. Chris Simpson, the new leader of the Canadian Medical Association, asks: “What do these successful countries have that we don’t?” 

He gives a three part answer: 

     1. They have a clear commitment to quality improvement, with goals and targets;

     2. They have buy-in and leadership from doctors; and

     3. They have strong leadership from a committed federal or national government.

I agree with all three, to some degree, but they also have one other HUGE advantage that Canada lacks: *mixed public and private funding*.

In my opinion Prime Minister Harper is providing the only sort of leadership that will, eventually, work for Canada: he is setting the system up for failure. And the Canadian health care system will fail, it must fail because it is totally unaffordable as currently structured. ALL, 100% of the successful system have some levels of both private money and fees for users. The best systems charge ALL users, even the poorest of the poor, for medical services - now, in the end the state pays for the poorest of the poor because they, simply, cannot or will not, but it bills them and eveyone knows that every person, rich or poor, citizen or visitor gets a bill. We all understand that there are dead beats and that we all end up paying for them but as long as we know that the _system_ tries to collect from everyone we are willing to pay our share.

The CMA is wrong. The Prime Minister is leading - not in the direction Canadians want to go, but in the right, the only sane direction.


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## McG (22 Sep 2014)

Here is an interesting assessment of where the nation is today.  I am not sure that I buy the thesis that Canadian economic growth can be achieved through defence growth, and I have left out the specifics of where that defence growth might be because I do not see those paragraphs adding to this thread.


> The path to a richer Canada goes through our Armed Forces
> By Conrad Black, National Post
> 20 Sep 2014
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (30 Sep 2014)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ is report on a pessimistic look at the near term from the _Geneva Report on the World Economy_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/are-we-on-the-verge-of-another-financial-crisis/article20850810/#dashboard/alerts


> Are we on the verge of another financial crisis?
> 
> DAVID PARKINSON
> ECONOMICS REPORTER — The Globe and Mail
> ...




I remain intrigued with the notion that the _Great Recession_ didn't, quite, do it's job: it didn't _wring out_ the economy, leaving it ready to grow again. One can argue, and some economists do, that the same from applied to the _Great Depression_ of the 1930s. The problem, then, they say, was that Roosevelt's _reforms_ prevented the market from  correcting itself, fully, and only a bloody and destructive war 'saved' us from ourselves, or from well intentioned political meddling, take your pick.


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## Edward Campbell (2 Oct 2014)

More pessimism, this time in an article which reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Times_, about IMF managing director Christine Lagarde's  comments about the weakening global economy:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2bfa11d6-4a44-11e4-8de3-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3F0TzSdOT


> Lagarde warns of ‘new mediocre’ era
> 
> By Robin Harding in Washington
> 
> ...




There is a HUGE ongoing debate, especially in Europe, about deficits and how and how fast to cut them.

Canada, of course, will have a balanced budget this year. The government will, likely, use the surplus to provide tax cuts. That is, generally, good, but it is not what John Maynard Keynes suggested. Everyone understands that Keynes said "stimulate (spend) during a recession or depression" and we know that works, to some degree. But: Keynes prescribed spending that can be switched on and off - not, in other words, most social spending or transfers to people. Keynes also said that spending should be cut when the economy is expanding; what he meant was that _stimulus_ spending must be switched off. Of course one cannot switch social spending off, especially not in good times

Defence spending, on the other hand, can be cut any time.  :'(   There is argument (favoured by a few, but not many economists) which says that in a time of _stagnation_ or _weakness_, as Mme Lagarde suggests were are in right now, it is good to spend on the military: especially on new equipment and facilities because producing new ships and planes or building new barracks creates (temporary) jobs ~ the kind of jobs that can be "switched off" again when times are good better.


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## Brad Sallows (2 Oct 2014)

Lagarde's "mediocrity" is just Heinlein's "bad luck".  We inhabit one of those intervals during which the innovators simply aren't able to keep pace with the consumers.


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## Edward Campbell (2 Oct 2014)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Lagarde's "mediocrity" is just Heinlein's "bad luck".  We inhabit one of those intervals during which the innovators simply aren't able to keep pace with the consumers.




Could well be, Brad, but deficits are real and, for many, frightening. The US, for example, wants to inflate its debt into oblivion (by debasing its currency), but the _market_ isn't cooperating. The Greeks and Spanish and Italians and French, and, and, and, want to spend their way into recovery, but the _market_ isn't cooperating. The Finns and Germans want to save their way into prosperity, but the _market_ isn't cooperating with them, either.  :dunno:


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## a_majoor (4 Oct 2014)

So long as the central banks refuse to see the economic crisis is a crisis of deleveraging and attempt to stop it, we will continue in a zombie like economy which lurches around and tries to consume whatever is handy.

The "Great Depression" was essentially a result of the vast debt overhangs of the Great Powers due to the prosecution of the Great War, and it continued for a long, miserable decade because the "New Dealers" would not let the markets clear. The great stagnation that Japan has been going through is a similar exercise; when the vast real estate bubble popped, the Japanese government stepped in and sheltered the banking sector, which had fortunes in loans and obligations backed by now worthless property. And of course financial tricks like QE today are simply attempts to paper over the debts that modern "welfare states" have managed to accumulate since the 1960's.

Clearing the debt overhang(s) won't be pretty. Most states have debts in the hundreds of billions of dollars, unfunded pension and benefit liabilities that are at least as large, and have created a huge consumer debt bubble by depressing interest rates (and people follow incentives). Each one of these could cause a crisis on their own, and all possible solutions are going to hurt a lot (government bond "haircuts" of 40-60%, dramatic reductions in state pensions and benefits, especially to government workers, and ever escalating interest rates for consumers).


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## Brad Sallows (5 Oct 2014)

It isn't a failure of markets to co-operate.  What I mean by "consumers" are "tax-eaters".  I believe it is possible for regulations and taxation to strangle productivity growth (to add burdens of compliance and reduce incentives of gain).  Then the regulators complain that the market isn't "working".

"Bind not the mouths of the kine that tread the grain."

"Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs".

How smart are the people running the show, really, when they ignore the wisdom of generations past distilled into straightforward recommendations?  This is what passes for my version of anti-elitism: I deplore people who went to impressive schools and have impressive credentials but fail to recognize their own limitations and act accordingly, and I deplore people who defer to "experts".

The debt overhang is another example of either collective stupidity or collective denial.  Nations derive most of their revenues from taxation.  Nations levy most of their taxes on economic activities: sales and income.  Taxes on today's deficit-fueled sales and income are tomorrow's revenues realized in the present.  Private persons and corporations can not deficit spend indefinitely.  Tomorrow's tax revenues must fall if today's reflect above-average levels of non-public deficit spending.  What do high-achieving impressive intellectuals in politics or administration of a government which calibrated its outflows to supercharged levels of revenue do when the average or - inevitably - sub-par (because taxes are not customarily levied on amounts paid to resolve debts) future arrives?   They panic and try to hold public spending at some level above 100% of true capacity, forever.  People can not simultaneously pay their debts, pay higher taxes, and continue new spending at the highest watermark.

If "mediocre" simply happens to be "average", then it is the benchmark.  Adjust accordingly.


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## Edward Campbell (12 Oct 2014)

There is, happily _in my view_, no consensus amongst the leaders of major economies about what (if anything) should be done about the global economy according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/chinas-central-bank-sees-very-low-risk-of-hard-landing/article21075153/#dashboard/follows/


> IMF warns global economy at risk; calls for bold action
> 
> KRISTA HUGHES AND LEIKA KIHARA
> WASHINGTON — Reuters
> ...




I agree that we, the OECD countries (plus a few) need to avert "the very real risk of a prolonged period of subpar growth.” The question is: How? The German prescription, austerity, isn't working; the US prescription, printing money, isn't working. Does Keynes have the answer? maybe, if we could get past the _myths_ about what John Maynard Keynes _might_ have said and read his words again. There is, still, a case for stimulus, *but* it *must* be the sort of stimulus that can be switched on and off - i.e. it _cannot be any sort of social spending_, and it should be financed by long term bond sales ... that means, _de facto_ public works, mostly _maintenance_ of public infrastructure: roads, railways, seaports, airports, sewers, sidewalks and so on. Increased defence spending, financed from tax revenues but without tax hikes, is also a choice, albeit, in pure economic terms, a decidely second best choice.


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## a_majoor (12 Oct 2014)

Long article on the genesis of Energy East, with some special attention to the various shenanigans by the Americans, the Irvings, India and other players in the game:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-08/keystone-be-darned-canada-finds-oil-route-around-obama.html?hootPostID=4f3e66907599c4d2f8f780a4e747296b


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## Altair (16 Oct 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loonie-oil-prices-could-fall-much-further-don-pittis-1.2799880



> The Economist article suggests that this is not going to be just a blip but more of a sea change, as global oil demand plunges permanently. The article quotes a study by Citibank saying that oil use is already falling in rich countries. Most oil is burned to propel vehicles, and increasing fuel efficiency, including conversion to electric and hybrids, means we are using less for that.
> 
> It rejects the argument that growth in places like China will push oil use ever higher, saying emerging economies will see the advantage of leap-frogging to new technology and won't pass through the first world's gas-guzzling phase. In the year since that report, an explosion of solar in India, and an analysis by Lazard saying renewables had become as cheap as fossil fuels, only made the case stronger.
> 
> ...



I wonder if a long term drop in oil prices would doom the wonder child of the Canadian economy, Alberta. Living here now and I'm not sure if they have diversified their economy at all yet, the way saskatchewan has with potash, agriculture, and oil.


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## Kirkhill (16 Oct 2014)

I wouldn't worry overmuch about the stability of Alberta's economy Altair.   I also live there.

Alberta can follow the same path as Saudi and just pump more oil (and gas) which will mean more pumps and pipelines.  Refineries may even become viable if selling crude becomes less profitable.

With respect to other industries - Alberta also has a strong forestry and agriculture sector as well as a very strong financial and services sector.  They just get masked by the overwhelming strength of the oil and gas sector.


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## a_majoor (20 Oct 2014)

While the numbers for Canada would be smaller (starting from a smaller base) we have the same issues (probably more so) and therfore suffer the same deficiencies in economic growth. Now having a situation like China, where 10% compounded growth rates are paid for at a huge cost in human suffering, ecological devastation etc. isn't the way to go, but we could look at how India's economy exploded after the elimination of the "permit Raj". I could certainly live with Canada's economy doing a reliable 3% per annum growth rate (rather than wishfully hoping for something even close); 5% would be even better:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2014/09/30/americas-missing-wealth/



> *America's Missing Wealth*
> 
> This story appears in the October 20, 2014 issue of Forbes.
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (8 Nov 2014)

Altair said:
			
		

> As a major oil exporter, I'm not sure Canadians should be chearing this.



But here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ is an explanation of why $80.00/bbl oil _might_ help the broader Canadian economy (beyond the oil patch):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/rob-insight/how-80-oil-is-actually-good-for-canada-in-the-long-run/article21465533/


> How $80 oil is actually good for Canada in the long run
> 
> SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
> 
> ...




Given its HUGE size, anything that _might_ help Ontario recover - by_* supply*_ing goods (and services) to meet American _*demand*_ will be good for Canada, at large. Alberta and Saskatchewan cannot carry the country indefinitely.


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## Hisoyaki (8 Nov 2014)

The US Fed has announced rate hikes for next year.

Interesting times are ahead for Canada, and indeed the world... 

http://www.businessinsider.com/gerard-minack-on-fed-rate-cycles-2014-11


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## CougarKing (19 Nov 2014)

Just one vote derailed the Keystone XL bill from passing...  

Reuters



> *Senate narrowly fails to pass Keystone XL pipeline bill*
> 
> Reuters – 8 hours ago
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (20 Nov 2014)

I am somewhat concerned that Australia is eating our Asian trade lunch, but this report (BBC News) suggests that both Australia and Sweden are "better" places to do business than Canada and that the USA, despite its many, many problems is close behind us.

I understand why Singapore, Switzerland and Hong Kong are "best for business," but we really should be "better" than Sweden and, in a perfect world, tied with the Aussies.


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## a_majoor (10 Mar 2015)

This piece could fit in a lot of places, but the issues that affect Quebec also affect many other provinces (and indeed Canada as a whole). The use of Brownshirt tactics (disguised as political theater) to thwart the ability of the Legislature (and by extention the "will of the people" who elected them in the first place) is very disturbing, and Quebec isn't the only place where these things happen (think about the activities of "Occupy", the "Ontario Anti-Poverty Coalition" or other "protest" groups). Long term, this could be quite damaging:

http://business.financialpost.com/2015/02/24/william-watson-austerity-or-a-quebexit/



> *William Watson: Austerity or a Quebexit?*
> William Watson | February 24, 2015 5:35 PM ET
> 
> If a place doesn’t get its debt under control, interest payments eventually devour its useful spending. Greek salad, anyone?
> ...


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## a_majoor (18 Mar 2015)

More about how the Provinces might be the ones to pull Canada down. Ontario alone has a debt almost half the size of the Federal debt, and is still spending like crazy; only they have better tools to hide the ever growing obligations. A spike in interest rates, a hint of a default and a huge pile of dominos goes down and takes everyone else with them:

http://business.financialpost.com/2015/03/12/jack-m-mintz-provinces-play-hide-the-deficits/



> *Jack M. Mintz: Provinces play ‘hide the deficits’ *
> Jack M. Mintz | March 12, 2015 | Last Updated: Mar 15 2:09 PM ET
> More from Jack M. Mintz
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (31 Mar 2015)

While Canada isn't starting off the X like the South American economies (we did manage to transition to an industrial age economy, even if it is/was largely a branch plant economy), many of the challenges of transitioning to a new economic model are going to be the same, and in our case there are a lot of institutional roadblocks in the form of structures and institutions which were created for the "old" system, and the people who benefit from the status quo. You thought the transition of the "Big Shift" was difficult?

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/03/30/can-latin-america-weather-the-death-of-the-blue-model/



> *Can Latin America Weather the Death of the Blue Model?*
> 
> Some call it “The Second Machine Age,” some call it “post-Fordism,” and some herald the emerging “information economy.” But no matter what you call the coming change, the march of technology will require a fundamental reorganization of how human capital is deployed in the economy, and nobody quite knows how to prepare for it. Latin America is especially vulnerable, and while the region’s economic leaders are officially optimistic, there’s also an unmistakable note of fear. President of the Inter-American Development Bank Luis Alberto Moreno writes in Project Syndicate:
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (1 Apr 2015)

Apparently no one has ever heard of the law of supply and demand, or looked at historic examples where decline in the labour supply increases the wages of the working class (indeed, the most extreme example is Europe after the Black Death; with 30% of the population gone demand for labour was so great it destroyed Feudal social structures like serfdom). What makes reading this article even more maddening is the critics of the law apparently have no conception that it is the very poor, unemployed and working class Canadians they claim to represent who will benefit the most.

http://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/thousands-of-temporary-foreign-workers-in-low-skilled-jobs-must-start-leaving-canada-today



> *Labour crunch looms as thousands of temporary foreign workers forced to leave today*
> Canadian Press | April 1, 2015 | Last Updated: Apr 1 9:23 AM ET
> More from Canadian Press
> 
> ...


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## TCBF (1 Apr 2015)

- A lot of those foreign workers mysteriously disappear just before the return boat docks. They have a health card and contacts in their clan community and they are laying low.

- If they do leave, maybe your average high school and university students can now claim their part time jobs back, because those are the jobs that disappeared as soon as the invasion began.


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## McG (2 Apr 2015)

A key to prosperity is a properly educated workforce.  Canadian workforce is suffering from an over emphasis on university at the expense of college.


> *Cut university enrolment by 30%, expand colleges, CEO-commissioned report urges
> University of Saskatchewan professor cites short-term thinking by schools, policy-makers*
> Pete Evans, CBC News
> 30 Mar 2015 (02 Apr update)
> ...


http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cut-university-enrolment-by-30-expand-colleges-ceo-commissioned-report-urges-1.3014893


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## dimsum (3 Apr 2015)

I completely agree with what Mr. Coates proposes, but as was stated, it will take a complete culture change to drop the "university > college" mentality, especially amongst new immigrants from Asia.  

If I were a Gr 12 student again and making the choice (again), my parents would have laughed off any notion of going to college, even though neither of them went to post-secondary school.  It was university or....well, another university.


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## zulu95 (4 Apr 2015)

As a current college student in Ontario I think my story might be of some merit here.

 When I was in grade 12 I had been hearing from my parents that university was the only way to go. They had both gone to university and so that's what I should do to. I put in my applications and was accepted but after a lot of thought I decided to take a year off to seriously consider what I wanted to do and eventually ended up going to college instead. 

Had I gone to university I would have spent four years and well over $100 000 without much to show for it at the end. The only well paying jobs available that field required at least a master's degree which would have involved more time and a lot more money. Instead I'm currently debt free, and halfway through a two year program with a 92% employment rate in the field of study within a year of graduation. The average salary is higher than what I could have expected if I had gone to university, I will have a minimum of two years work experience and earnings more than anyone my age who attended university, and will have little to no debt when I graduate. From a financial point of view I would have been dumb to choose to go to university over college.

My parents were not very happy with my decision initially but after explaining ever thing to them they came to the same conclusion that I had and now fully support my choice. 

There are many people here who have attended university for several years or even obtained degrees before realizing that except for the small percentage who go on to become professors or academics the point of post secondary education is to get a job and college is the best way to do that. I fully expect there to be a large movement towards college as an accepted alternative to university withing the next few decades.


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## a_majoor (9 Apr 2015)

Maybe this should be an election issue, but the article highlights a point I have made in the past; laws, regulations and structures are getting wildly out of line with the changes due to shifting technology and demographics. These changes are needed to clear obstructions to economic growth, and as the article makes clear, assist low income Canadians:

http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/taxation-and-regulation-in-the-era-of-uber-and-airbnb-present-new-hurdles-for-government



> *Taxation and regulation in the era of Uber and Airbnb present new hurdles for government*
> Finn Poschmann, Special to Financial Post | April 1, 2015 | Last Updated: Apr 1 5:47 PM ET
> More from Special to Financial Post
> 
> ...


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## a_majoor (15 Apr 2015)

Provinces still need to do far more to solve their overspending problems, otherwise, their debt could pull down the entire nation should a province (say, Ontario) do a Greece and start to get a credit downgrade or worse yet default:

http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/why-the-provinces-are-mired-in-debt-and-the-federal-government-is-just-fine



> *Why the provinces are mired in debt, and the federal government is just fine*
> Philip Cross, Special to Financial Post | April 15, 2015 9:38 AM ET
> 
> Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press fileshe federal budget will remain balanced because the government has capped its future liability for health care transfers and pension obligations and begun the long, arduous process of reining in the compensation of its employees. .
> ...


----------



## CougarKing (7 May 2015)

The opportunity from the TPP that may soon pass us by because of the need to protect our dairy industry?

Reuters



> *Canada risks being sidelined in Pacific trade deal: USDA head*
> 
> By David Dolan
> 
> ...


----------



## GAP (7 May 2015)

They are not going to do anything that threatens votes until after the election


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## a_majoor (13 May 2015)

Canning the protectionism of the dairy board would save Canadians an average of $300/year. This would be especially good for poor families to have their grocery bills reduced; and I am pretty sure there are more people who buy groceries and vote that there are voting dairy farmers....


----------



## dapaterson (13 May 2015)

Remember, Canada's ridings give disproportionate weight to rural areas (both federally and provincially).


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## Kirkhill (13 May 2015)

And a good chunk of the Canadian dairy industry is centred on La Beauce and Lotbiniere - areas around Quebec city where the Conservatives actually hold support in Quebec.


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## Edward Campbell (13 May 2015)

This, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Bloomberg Business_, is a worry report on _confidence_ in Canada:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-13/aboriginal-snub-shakes-asian-confidence-in-canada-s-export-plans


> Aboriginal Snub Shakes Asian Confidence in Canada’s Export Plans
> 
> Rebecca Penty
> 
> ...




Since this band can afford to turn down almost $1 Billion it, clearly, doesn't need a penny from Canadian taxpayers, ever again.


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## Edward Campbell (14 May 2015)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Foreign Affairs_ is an article, by Richard Katz about the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal from a US perspective:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2015-05-12/trade-trials


> Trade Trials
> *Getting TPP Right Is Better than Getting It Fast*
> 
> By Richard Katz
> ...




Japan is not the only country that is "being incredibly stubborn on farm liberalization:" Canada is just as bad with its desire to keep protecting a few dairy farmers.

Canada stands to gain _some more_ than the USA ... especially if we have to learn to_* compete*_ with (against?) Asians in a free trade area.


----------



## Edward Campbell (19 May 2015)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Project Syndicate_, is a bit of a rant by Niall Ferguson about the follies of the some Keynesians when commenting on the UK election. It's here because it's filled with graphs ~ and you know I love my economic data arranged in nice graphs ~ that show how Canada is doing vis-à-vis our G-7 compatriots:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-economic-consequences-of-mr-osborne-by-niall-ferguson-2015-05


> The Economic Consequences of Mr. Osborne
> 
> Niall Ferguson
> 
> ...




I was tempted to put this in the Election 2015 thread because it shows that Prime Minister Harper's record is pretty good ... not the best, but better than the countries favoured by the Liberals and NDP.


----------



## a_majoor (10 Jun 2015)

Although this is an election issue, it has the potential for debilitating long term effects on the economy and Canadians (as Ontarians will soon discover), so I placed it here:

http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/jack-m-mintz-cpp-expansion-hurts-poor-and-middle-income-canadians



> *Jack M. Mintz: CPP expansion hurts poor and middle-income Canadians*
> 
> Jack M. Mintz | June 4, 2015 7:28 PM ET
> More from Jack M. Mintz
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (16 Jun 2015)

Looking longer term, the future is coming and it will be strange. This article from NBF is about the United States, but the figures for Canada will be similar on a percentage basis (indeed, because Canada is urbanized to an even greater extent than the United States, the proportional costs and benefits might be even greater):

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/06/teamsters-versus-aarp-and-rest-of.html



> *Teamsters versus the AARP and the rest of society for Robotic cars *
> 
> Suncor is getting self driving trucks for the Oilsands. By 2020, they plan to convert to robotic trucks
> 
> ...



The dramatic reduction in individual costs also includes the reduction or elimination of car loans and payments. It should also be considered that the reduction of the car fleet also means the demand for raw materials and energy to build cars will decrease, the numbers of automobile workers will decline radically and so on. This also means the political clout of these industries and labour unions will decrease accordingly, and cities like Hamilton, Windsor and Oshawa will see a severe decline in employment, and possibly population.

There will be lots of other second and third order effects as well, which I don't think anyone in the political class is thinking about this in any serious way.


----------



## Edward Campbell (6 Jul 2015)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, are some useful thinking points from Gwyn Morgan:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/executive-insight/a-decline-in-albertas-fortunes-means-a-decline-in-quebecs/article25309327/


> A decline in Alberta’s fortunes means a decline in Quebec’s
> 
> SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
> 
> ...




_I believe_ that there is a _green economy_ and _I think_ there is money to be made, jobs to be had and important _social goods_ to be advanced by better focusing our use of non-renewable resources, like petroleum, on _mobility_ while we use greener forms of energy ~ which, _I think_, must include _nuclear_ ~ for _static_ applications. But: we have oil and we can and should extract, refine and use it here (and sell it abroad) for our _collective_ benefit: the "greatest good for the greatest number" and all that.


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## Edward Campbell (22 Jul 2015)

_How to make Canada (more) relevant, again?_

Correct our position ~ move it to the left, towards Israel, Korea, Japan, Finland and Sweden ~ on this chart:

          
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




It will not happen because:

     1. R&D requires a long term commitment for both business and politics ~ and both are driven by short term _imperatives_; and

     2. We, usually, get R and D wrong ~

          _*R*_esearch should be done in laboratories, public (mostly but not all in universities) and private, and the _public_ (governments using your money) should be the major payer, but

          _*D*_evelopment should be done, primarily (but, again, not exclusively) in the private sector, in privately funded labs and centres ~ but it may be _supported_, in part, by public money, through the tax system.


----------



## Edward Campbell (27 Jul 2015)

Here is a useful _infographic_ shoing Canada's share (Just above Rest of the World) of the global economy:


----------



## Infanteer (27 Jul 2015)

I'm still concerned with the preponderance of the service industry.  Productivity is key and I feel we need to make more than triple sized coffees and new credit products.  I think a cultural shift is required - after the Second World War, the university degree was the key to the middle class, so universities ramped up their production lines.  Now finding skilled workers seems to be difficult.  The comment by Dyson is telling:



> In fact, Mr. Dyson, Britain's most famous manufacturer, doesn't actually manufacture anything in Britain. He hasn't done so for 10 years, since he was refused local permission to expand his Wiltshire factory and came to the realization, as thousands of other manufacturers have, that hardly any of the components of his machines were made in Britain any more. So why not move everything to Asia, where it's simply easier to build things?
> 
> “There ought to be huge advantages to manufacturing in England,” he says with an indignation that hasn't dulled over the decade. “This is where our headquarters are, it's where our managers are, our engineers. We've got two bigger offices in Singapore and Malaysia, and we don't want to do that – it's a logistical nightmare – but we're forced to do it.”
> 
> ...



http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/james-dyson-reinvented-the-vacuum-now-he-wants-to-remake-the-economy/article533746/?page=all

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21648003-lack-skilled-workers-and-managers-drags-country-down-mind-gap


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## Edward Campbell (27 Jul 2015)

Infanteer said:
			
		

> I'm still concerned with the preponderance of the service industry.  Productivity is key and I feel we need to make more than triple sized coffees and new credit products.  I think a cultural shift is required - after the Second World War, the university degree was the key to the middle class, so universities ramped up their production lines.  _Now finding skilled workers seems to be difficult_.  The comment by Dyson is telling:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/james-dyson-reinvented-the-vacuum-now-he-wants-to-remake-the-economy/article533746/?page=all
> 
> http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21648003-lack-skilled-workers-and-managers-drags-country-down-mind-gap




I mentioned this elsewhere, in these fora; it's a problem that some of our military leaders and senior government officials knew about and commented on back in the mid 1980s, 30 years ago.

There's an economic dilemma: countries want low-skill/high wage jobs ~ the sorts of jobs that were characteristic of our _metal bending_ industrial economy in the 1950s ~ because they allow the normal, moderately intelligent young man to earn the kind of money that supports a middle class family. But low skills cannot, for any length of time, command high wages, so the low skill work _migrates_ to low cost economies ~ just as, for example, Japanese jobs migrated to China and, now, those Chinese jobs are _migrating_ to Indonesia and the Philippines. (I'm sorry, boys and girls, but the "laws" of economics are just about as immutable as the laws of physics ~ and just as unforgiving.) So, back in the 1970s, we saw the _job migration_ begin (it began even earlier in some places - coal mining in the Netherlands, for example, moved out in the 1960s: good quality coal could be mined much more cheaply in other parts of Europe) and our response was partially correct: we saw that high wages demanded high skills, but we equated high skills with higher education ... not true. A good education is a "good" (a valuable thing) on its own merits, but it may not pay much of a return. There's a reason that actuaries, for example, earn much, Much, MUCH more than sociologists or art historians; there's a reason that engineers with BCSEEs earn much more than "women's studies" grads with PhDs. The market pays for what it needs, the education system has its own mini-marketplace, for teachers, but it does not "set" the wages anywhere else. Part of our (the great big, society-at-large, our) response, community colleges, was right, but even then we, society at large, "valued" white collar work higher than blue collar work and, at the same time, we (society again) wanted to _elevate_ _pink collar_ work to "professional" status. The end result was that we produced too many people for the service sector and we allowed really valuable, high skill/high wage work (tool and die makers, machinists, electricians, draughtsmen, and, and, and ...) to migrate, too, with the low skill jobs.

Public policy can only do so much ... public attitudes matter a lot. If parents raise their kids to believe that selling insurance is, somehow, "better" than making precision parts on an automated lathe then we are buggered as a productive country.


----------



## dimsum (27 Jul 2015)

The things you learn reading these forums - I had no idea there was such a thing as "pink collar work".


----------



## Old Sweat (27 Jul 2015)

Dimsum said:
			
		

> The things you learn reading these forums - I had no idea there was such a thing as "pink collar work".



In the bad, old days it referred to jobs like secretaries, typists and receptionists. I recall as a teenager in high school wondering along with the rest of our group why the girls in our class couldn't take shop and draughting, etc, but were streamed into home economics, typing and the like.


----------



## Jed (28 Jul 2015)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I mentioned this elsewhere, in these fora; it's a problem that some of our military leaders and senior government officials knew about and commented on back in the mid 1980s, 30 years ago.
> 
> There's an economic dilemma: countries want low-skill/high wage jobs ~ the sorts of jobs that were characteristic of our _metal bending_ industrial economy in the 1950s ~ because they allow the normal, moderately intelligent young man to earn the kind of money that supports a middle class family. But low skills cannot, for any length of time, command high wages, so the low skill work _migrates_ to low cost economies ~ just as, for example, Japanese jobs migrated to China and, now, those Chinese jobs are _migrating_ to Indonesia and the Philippines. (I'm sorry, boys and girls, but the "laws" of economics are just about as immutable as the laws of physics ~ and just as unforgiving.) So, back in the 1970s, we saw the _job migration_ begin (it began even earlier in some places - coal mining in the Netherlands, for example, moved out in the 1960s: good quality coal could be mined much more cheaply in other parts of Europe) and our response was partially correct: we saw that high wages demanded high skills, but we equated high skills with higher education ... not true. A good education is a "good" (a valuable thing) on its own merits, but it may not pay much of a return. There's a reason that actuaries, for example, earn much, Much, MUCH more than sociologists or art historians; there's a reason that engineers with BCSEEs earn much more than "women's studies" grads with PhDs. The market pays for what it needs, the education system has its own mini-marketplace, for teachers, but it does not "set" the wages anywhere else. Part of our (the great big, society-at-large, our) response, community colleges, was right, but even then we, society at large, "valued" white collar work higher than blue collar work and, at the same time, we (society again) wanted to _elevate_ _pink collar_ work to "professional" status. The end result was that we produced too many people for the service sector and we allowed really valuable, high skill/high wage work (tool and die makers, machinists, electricians, draughtsmen, and, and, and ...) to migrate, too, with the low skill jobs.
> 
> Public policy can only do so much ... public attitudes matter a lot. If parents raise their kids to believe that selling insurance is, somehow, "better" than making precision parts on an automated lathe then we are buggered as a productive country.



Let's get our country going in a productive direction.


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## Oldgateboatdriver (28 Jul 2015)

Dimsum said:
			
		

> The things you learn reading these forums - I had no idea there was such a thing as "pink collar work".



Not only was there such a thing, but the old naval administration building at the Halifax dockyard, which employed mostly female personnel and (by sheer coincidence?) was painted salmon pink was nicknamed the Pink Pagoda.  ;D


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## dimsum (28 Jul 2015)

Oldgateboatdriver said:
			
		

> Not only was there such a thing, but the old naval administration building at the Halifax dockyard, which employed mostly female personnel and (by sheer coincidence?) was painted *salmon pink* was nicknamed the Pink Pagoda.  ;D



[Monty Python]

Pacific or Atlantic?  

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!!

[/Monty Python]


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## dapaterson (28 Jul 2015)

Dimsum said:
			
		

> [Monty Python]
> 
> Pacific or Atlantic?
> 
> ...



Hmm... Halifax... which coast would that be?

At least you've demonstrated why your trade dropped the "Nav" from their name  >


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## Edward Campbell (8 Aug 2015)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is an interesting and, I hope, provocative article by John Ibbitson on the always difficult subject of the $17 Billion _equalization_ programme (1% of Canada's total GDP and nearly 6% of federal government revenues or expenses (which are about the same since the budget is (roughly) balanced):

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/as-wynne-and-notley-battle-harper-wall-tries-to-push-crucial-debate/article25891068/


> Forget Wynne and Notley battling Harper, and pay attention to Brad Wall
> 
> SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
> 
> ...




First: a reminder that §36(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982 says: _"Parliament and the government of Canada are committed to the principle of making Equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation."_

Second: there is how, in 2012/13 _equalization_ worked:

          _*Province                   Received *_ 
          Quebec                     ($7.833 billion)
          Ontario                     ($3.169 billion)
          Manitoba                   ($1.792 billion)
          New Brunswick          ($1.513 billion)
          Nova Scotia               ($1.458 billion)
          Prince Edward Island ($   340 million)

That means that Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan paid the $16+ Billion in 2012/13.


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## Brad Sallows (9 Aug 2015)

There is an important distinction which sometimes gets lost in the fight over equalization payments.  Provinces are not contributors.  Only the various sources of federal revenue are contributors; this means, primarily, Canadians.  A NB taxpayer earning X and a BC taxpayer earning X pay (ceteris paribus) the same federal income and sales taxes, but the NB taxpayer likely pays higher provincial income and sales taxes.  Nevertheless, because the formulae for determining revenue-generating capability find NB to overall be at a relative disadvantage (weaker tax base, hence lower revenues despite taxing it more heavily), the federal government throws some money into a pot.

I don't have a strong feeling one way or the other about equalization - I haven't really taken the time to think it through - but I strongly favour the principle of not binding the mouths of the kine that tread the grain.  Shut up and get out of the way.

The more Wynne opens her mouth to directly or indirectly beg for someone else to solve her fiscal problems, the more foolish I think she is.  If she doesn't take advantage of the tax points Harper has left on the table soon, she could find herself stuck with a non-CPC government that has better things to do than take heat for raising taxes and allow Wynne to enjoy spending the money, and stuck having to raise ON taxes after the feds have already increased some taxes and raised the temperature of ON voters.


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## Infanteer (9 Aug 2015)

All you could ever want on equalization.

http://thoughtundermined.com/2012/04/24/equalization-misconceptions/


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## a_majoor (27 Aug 2015)

Over many posts and in many threads, Edward has been on about the idea that *we* need to increase our productivity, but as Canadians, have been pretty terible at it. This long articel by "The American Interest" talks about how DARPA has used innovative structures, iincentives and thinking to become "the" agancy which has developed and shepherded more innovative ideas and products into service and the US market than anyone else.

This model could be emulated by many of our own government bureaucracies and large corporations to move ideas from concepts to marketable goods and serivces, which would help solve the productivity problem that Edward has told us about, and help raise Canada's standard of living and economic growth prospects in the bargain:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/08/01/all-that-darpa-can-be/

Part 1



> *All That DARPA Can Be*
> William B. Bonvillian
> 
> How DARPA has organized itself for innovation bears lessons for the U.S. economy that are more useful than the innovations themselves.
> ...


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## dapaterson (27 Aug 2015)

Dimsum said:
			
		

> [Monty Python]
> 
> Pacific or Atlantic?
> 
> ...



You were remarkably prescient with that comment...


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## a_majoor (27 Aug 2015)

Part 2



> With this we come back to DARPA: While it fits historically with the “extended pipeline” model, it has also developed features that have enabled it to innovate in the legacy defense sector. The emerging outline of an overall “innovation organization” model will be crucial as the Office of the Secretary, DARPA, and their allies embark on a new innovation strategy for “technology offsets.” This new task will illustrate key features of the innovation organization model—just what we need to reduce entropy in all our legacy economic sectors, not just defense, and increase synergy, creativity, and productivity.
> 
> There is an obvious rule functioning here: no innovations, no innovation system. Innovation entrepreneurs require not only an understanding of the overall system for its development; innovation also requires genuine new ideas with some sort of practical application. The “front end” of the innovation system is thus a necessary but not a sufficient element of innovation success and, ironically perhaps, it is a harder necessary element to bring about in legacy sectors than in out-of-the-blue frontier innovation. It means, in particular, that we must find ways to move beyond the “valley-of-death” stage between research and late-stage development—so-called because it is the place where many efforts go to die.
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (27 Aug 2015)

Part 3



> Stealth Aircraft: Air superiority has been a fundamental U.S. defense doctrine since World War II.13 However, by the late Vietnam War, Soviet air defense systems were making U.S. aircraft ever more vulnerable. This forced the Air Force to employ vast air armadas of mixed-purpose aircraft undertaking jamming and electronic countermeasures, chaff dropping, and radar attacks in order to protect the smaller number of aircraft that were actually undertaking the strike. As early as 1974, the Defense Department’s office of the director of defense research and engineering (DDR&E) and DARPA began discussing the development of a “Harvey” aircraft (named after the invisible rabbit in the play and film) that would have a greatly reduced radar, infrared, acoustic, and visual appearance. A Lockheed engineer, Denys Overholser, found the “stealth” answer in a Russian basic research physics paper, DDR&E leaders Malcolm Currie and then William Perry pushed the concept, and DARPA got to work on it.
> 
> Air Force leaders resisted, seeing limited value in slow and largely unmaneuverable aircraft; they had to be guaranteed that funding for their other aircraft programs would not be affected by the budget for stealth. Encouraged by Perry, Lockheed pushed ahead with the F-117; its performance against a Soviet-supplied air defense system in the Gulf War exceeded expectations. Only the combination of a critical innovation institution (DARPA), the island/bridge approach of protecting the innovators in DARPA and in Lockheed’s Skunkworks but giving them a bridge back to top Defense Department decision-makers, a thinking community organized around the challenge, and the linking of innovators and operators (at DARPA, at Skunkworks and, when they came around, at the Air Force) was able to overcome the legacy sector forces in the Pentagon. Change agents at the top of the Defense Department were critical.
> 
> ...


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## Edward Campbell (29 Aug 2015)

KAL, the editorial cartoonist in _The Economist_, explains that economics, at the political level, including fiscal and monetary policy, is not for the faint of heart:

                         
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



                         Source:http://www.economist.com/news/world-week/21662598-kals-cartoon?fsrc=scn/li/cp/kal/st/kalcartoonaug29th


----------



## CougarKing (1 Sep 2015)

Is Canada doomed to be just another resource base for China in the way Australia has?

Anyways, this full article shows how Australian economy has become dependent on China:

Diplomat



> *China and Australia: It’s the Economy, brilliant
> The Australian government tried to reassure in the wake of market gyrations.*
> 
> By Helen Clark
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (13 Sep 2015)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is an article about some smart (and maybe not so smart) ideas about help the Canadian economy:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/nineteen-smart-ideas-to-create-a-flourishing-canadian-economy/article26345165/


> Fifteen smart ideas to create a flourishing Canadian economy
> 
> ERIC ANDREW-GEE
> The Globe and Mail
> ...




Some of these ideas, notably numbers 1, 5, 6 and 8 are either whimsical or are notions that specific industrial sectors might pursue on their own. A few, 10, 11 and 14, are just ways to funnel taxpayers' money into specific industries ~ economists, like governments, are not very good at picking winners. A couple more, like 2 and 3, are ways to funnel money into infrastructure _investment_, but #3 gets the priority right: its aim is to improve _productivity_. That leaves numbers 4, 7, 9, 12, 13 and 15.

Number 4 does matter and it should be a constant theme in our ongoing, daily, discussion with US officials.

Number 7 might make for interesting, very location specific, projects for some provincial and territorial governments.

Number 9 has considerable merit, in my opinion, bur sovereign wealth funds require good, professional, _private_ and _strategic_ management. Money is too important to be left to the politicians.

Number 12 is a good idea, if you delete the word China. Tourism is a "good," profitable industry that does require some government support, specifically with e.g. visas. We want to make it easy for tourists (by definition people with money to spend) who do not pose security or unlawful immigration threats to Canada, to come, visit, spend and return to their homes with pleasant memories. The private sector has a lot of catching up to do here.

Number 13 ought to be a top priority.

Number 15 is, _in my opinion_, a good idea, _*but*_ _I know_ that some, with very valid reasons will disagree. _I believe_ that marijuana (and prostitution) should be legalized, rather as alcohol and gambling are, despite their proven social costs. The economic calculation will, of course, depend on what costs you choose to use and how you choose to measure: some social "costs" (and benefits) are highly subjective. On balance I think M Trudeau is right, in principle, but I am 95% sure that he is right for the wrong reasons which means that his plan is wrong, in practice.


----------



## Brad Sallows (13 Sep 2015)

We already have (1) (co-op programs).  Results are mixed, but generally unimpressive.  Students in an intensive STEM program can not be pulled away for more than 4 months without skill fade, and you can't get much out of a student in 4 months.  Generally you wind up with a poorly built, very small piece of a non-critical component that someone else has to fix later.  We don't need to add a federal bureaucracy to try to fix that which can't be fixed.  Let universities and companies continue to do what they are already doing without interference.

(2) is an example of wishful thinking.  We will pay much more in than we ever get out.  "Sexy" is a lazy adjective meaning "attractive, but impractical".  The initiative can also be self-defeating: to create an attractive neighbourhood is to attract everyone, which eventually prices out the people wanted in the first place.

(3) and (4) are important and practical.

(5) is not a novel idea.

(6) is trivial and ridiculous.

(7) is environmentally risky (bird life).

(8) will be a greater public nuisance and hazard than the geese.

(9) is ridiculous: we have a large debt, and we should build up a wealth fund from taxes and somehow find wizards to run it?  Let the private business world be the "sovereign wealth fund" they already are, let them manage themselves, and continue to tax them.

(10), (11), (14): yes, just particular niches: someone's particular quiffs.  Anything we subsidize that is exported is simply a partial gift to foreigners.

(12) is already done.  Someone will first have to prove that what is already done is "not enough", and then quantify how much "more" is "enough".

(13) important and practical, but insoluble with merely "more money".  The kids have to want to be there; the parents have to support them and keep them there; the standards have to be set and met.  Until the cultural corrosion of "not acting white" is removed, very little will be achieved.

(15) leads to the eternal economic gain vs social harm debate.


----------



## GR66 (13 Sep 2015)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, is an article about some smart (and maybe not so smart) ideas about help the Canadian economy:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/nineteen-smart-ideas-to-create-a-flourishing-canadian-economy/article26345165/
> 
> ...



I generally agree.

Item #1 however I think is something I think that provinces could/should encourage through their education funding policies (in a very general way).  Don't tell Universities what degrees they can and cannot offer...and don't force students to take certain programs.  However, I see no problem (and great potential merit) in the Provinces providing preferential funding to schools for those programs (e.g. engineering, medicine, pure sciences, skilled trades, etc.) which potentially can provide the greatest growth in competitive advantage for Canadian industry while providing less funding for those programs (English literature, political science, underwater basket weaving, etc.) which provide less competitive advantage.

A well balanced society still needs the 2nd group of people, but it also needs a very strong economy (provided by the first group) to be able to flourish.

Item #4 must always be a top priority for us given the huge percentage of our trade that is with the US.

Item #15 I'm torn over but fear that doing so could have a negative impact on Item #4.


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## a_majoor (16 Sep 2015)

Overall I have to agree with Edward's take on the article. The government and bureaucrats should not be intervening in the market or picking "winners and losers", becasue they have no proper signals to read, nor do they have a vested interest in the outcomes (If a bureaucrat picks the wrong branch of the Engineering sciences to fund, he/she never faces any direct consequences, while downstream the marketplace has to make contortions to reflect the surplus/shortage of that particular specialty).

Most of the suggestions amount to special pleading for particular interests, and if you stop to think about it, even suggesting funding aborigional education should cause a head shake; if aborigional bands can provide gigantic salaries and perques to band "leaders" and their cronies, then there is more than enough money there _already_ to pay for good quality education; it has just been misallocated.

This goes back to the idea of regulatory failure; government interventions in the marketplace cause distortions or mal incentives, causing people to make decisions that have shiort term payoffs for themselves, but create longer term distortions and issues in the greater economy. Ensuring a level playing field, transparency of information and providing neutral arbitration of contract related disputes (Courts of Law) do far more to grow the economy than any amount of "pump priming", "government investment" or regulatory interventions ever do.


----------



## a_majoor (17 Sep 2015)

Perhaps there needs to be a "Grand Strategy for Canada" thread. This is a very interesting look at the middle powers today, and how we stack up: (Part 1)

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/01/10/power-rankings-the-second-tier/



> *Power Rankings: The Second Tier*
> Walter Russell Mead & Nicholas M. Gallagher
> 
> The second part of our series on global power in 2015. This time: the aspiring powers, the regional hegemons, the has-beens and the wanna-bes.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (17 Sep 2015)

Part 2:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/01/10/power-rankings-the-second-tier/



> 4) Turkey
> 
> Geography has always been Turkey’s best friend. At the intersection of Europe and the Middle East, Turkey controls some of the world’s most vital trade routes, including Russia’s link to the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Geography boosts Turkish power in another way; it sits at the center of a region of enormous importance, surrounded by crisis ridden states.
> 
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (23 Sep 2015)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Post_, is a report on some calming words by _Bank of Canada_ Governor Stephen Poloz:

http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/terence-corcoran-stephen-poloz-for-prime-minister


> Stephen Poloz for Prime Minister
> 
> Terence Corcoran | September 22, 2015
> 
> ...




I was tempted to post this in the Election 2015 thread because it does provide a useful critique of some of the rubbish being spouted from the left of the political spectrum, especially by young candidates with no background in fiscal policy, business or economics. 

We are, technically, in recession ... but do you (or most political candidates, including party leaders) understand what that really means? I think not. And the first question one ought to ask about sliding into a technical recession, as Canada has done, is;_ "So what?"_ And the correct answer to that question is:  :dunno: _"So nothing,"_ ~ market forces change and we adapt, sometimes painfully, more often, as now, without too much difficulty.

In short, notwithstanding all the _hype_, the sky is not falling, and almost everything said by Messers Mulcair and Trudeau and most of what's been said by Prime Minister Harper is nonsense, designed to _frighten_ _*you*_ into making poor electoral decisions ... and, in my opinion, there are no really good ones, just some one that are is less bad than all the others.


----------



## a_majoor (8 Oct 2015)

If we imbued more Canadians with this sort foo attitude this thread would not even exist. An interesting note (from the post where this was taken), Forbes website took this down because of the reaction to it. IF there was a bit less of this sort of "reaction" then this thread would also not exist. Go to the link and read the comments by Techraptor posters, very illuminating (Sadly, there does not seem to be a link or archive of the Forbes comments):

http://techraptor.net/content/there-is-no-diversity-crisis-in-tech-by-brian-hall



> There Is No Diversity Crisis In Tech by Brian Hall
> 
> Editor’s Note: We are reposting this article by Brian Hall with his permission after he got the copyright to it from Forbes. It had previously been up on their website for about 24 hours and then got pulled for mysterious reasons with “violating terms” cited but no more description. While there are a lot of theories on why it was pulled, we don’t know, but given the backlash surrounding it on the Internet, we believe that we must advocate against censorship in any way we can, so we are hosting it here. The backlash it received is amazing considering it is a pretty light editorial. You can see more about it on Brian’s website.
> Needless to say, these are Brian’s own words and views on the topic.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (8 Oct 2015)

I agree generally, with Quebec, on the issue of maritime boundaries, as discussed in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _CBC News_:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-calls-for-urgent-extension-of-northern-border-1.3261668


> Quebec calls for 'urgent' extension of northern border
> *Provincial boundary ends at shoreline, complicating maritime strategy for Plan Nord*
> 
> By Ryan Hicks, CBC News
> ...




I'm in general agreement, only, because I suspect that the fate of the islands will be a problem. I also wonder if a province needs a boundary that extends, say, beyond 3 miles.

But I am in general agreement because issues like nthe boundaries need to be settled before provinces can make good economic plans.


----------



## a_majoor (15 Oct 2015)

Interesting how we stack up with Denmark (at least according to one American). Too bad we seem willing to throw it away for spite in this election:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/425544/somethings-awesome-state-denmark-kevin-d-williamson



> *Something’s Awesome in the State of Denmark *
> by Kevin D. Williamson October 14, 2015 12:29 AM @kevinNR
> 
> Bernie Sanders’s Denmark love is another reminder that our Democratic friends, who imagine themselves to be worldly cosmopolitans more at ease with sophisticated European ways, don’t actually know a damned thing about what’s going on overseas.
> ...



and some discussion of how Denmark reformed some of the excesses of the Welfare State:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/world/europe/danes-rethink-a-welfare-state-ample-to-a-fault.html?_r=0



> *Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault*
> By SUZANNE DALEYAPRIL 20, 2013
> 
> COPENHAGEN — It began as a stunt intended to prove that hardship and poverty still existed in this small, wealthy country, but it backfired badly. Visit a single mother of two on welfare, a liberal member of Parliament goaded a skeptical political opponent, see for yourself how hard it is.
> ...


----------



## Edward Campbell (22 Oct 2015)

In this column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, Jeffrey Simpson explains five essentially economic "remedies" for Atlantic Canada's perpetual "troubles" which a new, beholden, Liberal government might decide to try:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/jeffrey-simpson-with-liberal-sweep-political-stars-align-for-atlantic-canada/article26917071/


> With Liberal sweep, political stars align for Atlantic Canada
> 
> SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
> 
> ...




I don't agree with Mr Simpson all that often, but I think he's right on this one; I hope someone is whispering in Prime Minister designate Trudeau's ear.


----------



## Brad Sallows (22 Oct 2015)

I doubt more immigration will help.  There is no shortage of available workers.  Part of Atlantic Canada's problem with the status quo Simpson laments is that the status quo already motivates too many people to sit where they are.

"Think how to position the region to take advantage of these opportunities."

Oh, that's helpful advice.  I have more advice along those lines: "Think how to do useful things better.".

>An oil pipeline from Alberta to Saint John is a national imperative.

Good grief.  Why take the shortest distance to maritime shipping when you can spread the risk of spills that the environmentalists worry about across nearly the entire width of the country, and maximize the amount of pipeline vulnerable to malcontents.


----------



## Edward Campbell (22 Oct 2015)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> I doubt more immigration will help.  There is no shortage of available workers.  Part of Atlantic Canada's problem with the status quo Simpson laments is that the status quo already motivates too many people to sit where they are.
> 
> "Think how to position the region to take advantage of these opportunities."
> 
> ...




I think what Mr Simpson is aiming at is the _right kind of immigrant_: bright, young, well educated, entrepreneurial Asians, especially, to reinvigorate the business culture and populate the university research labs.


----------



## Brad Sallows (22 Oct 2015)

And why would they want to live in Atlantic Canada and pay those levels of provincial taxes, rather than in the GVRD or Toronto or Waterloo region and pay BC or ON levels of provincial taxes?  If subsidies and other enticements are necessary, then we are back to pork-barreling.


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver (22 Oct 2015)

Well, the ON levels of taxation may not stay as low as they currently are if Ms. Wynne continues to accumulate large deficits over large deficits.  Just saying ...


----------



## a_majoor (22 Oct 2015)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> In this column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, Jeffrey Simpson explains five essentially economic "remedies" for Atlantic Canada's perpetual "troubles" which a new, beholden, Liberal government might decide to try:
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/jeffrey-simpson-with-liberal-sweep-political-stars-align-for-atlantic-canada/article26917071/
> 
> I don't agree with Mr Simpson all that often, but I think he's right on this one; I hope someone is whispering in Prime Minister designate Trudeau's ear.



Gerald Butts is whispering how to keep voters happy and stupid to win the next election in the Young Dauphin's ear.....


----------



## Brad Sallows (24 Oct 2015)

Recession's comin', maw.

"What they found was that an increase in the household debt-to-GDP ratio is a solid predictor of slowing economic growth to come. Soaring debt loads are typically accompanied by booms in consumption that put downward pressure on a country’s trade balance (it imports more than it exports).

When the household debt boom ends, investment and consumption go into decline. A country’s exports are then likely to rise again to cushion the impact, however that only works when the rest of the global economy is healthy. (Interestingly, the researchers were able to go back using their data from before 2000 and accurately predict the scale and intensity of the Great Recession to come.)"


----------



## CougarKing (29 Oct 2015)

Let's see if this is more than just hype over the prospect over new green jobs with the ascendance of the Trudeau government:

Vancity Buzz



> *Strong B.C. climate plan could create 900,000 jobs: report*
> By Lauren Sundstrom
> 10:09 AM PDT, Wed October 28, 2015
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (29 Oct 2015)

Looking at the record of Green job creation globally, the genneral trend is the companies roll up the mat once the subsidies dissapear, since "green" energy is not competative with thermal or hydro except in very limited niche roles. (The fact that you need gas turbine generators running 24/7 on hot idle to instantly pick up the slack when "green" energy falters should be testament enough to where this technology really stands).

Looking at Spain and Germany is also illustrative.


----------



## a_majoor (31 Oct 2015)

Mike Rowe (of "Dirty Jobs" fame) delivers an awesome smackdown to an overprivilaged twit who believes that "hard work" is equated to racism or slavery. We need more people with his attitude in charge, and teaching values to our next generation:

https://m.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/photos/a.151342491542569.29994.116999698310182/1075683639108445/?type=3



> Mike Rowe
> 
> What's on YOUR Wall?
> 
> ...


----------



## Rifleman62 (6 Nov 2015)

Apparently the POTUS will announce very shortly that he will veto Keystone XL pipeline.

Update:

President Obama will announce this morning that he is rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, the Associated Press reports. Watch live at 11:45 a.m. ET on Fox News and FoxNews.com. 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/11/06/obama-rejects-keystone-xl-pipeline-bid/ http://video.foxnews.com/v/2553565094001/#sp=watch-live


----------



## a_majoor (19 Nov 2015)

The problem in the United States is estimated to be between $2 and 4 _trillion_ dollars (the numbers arn't clear because the various States and municipalities have been using clever accounting to disguise the problems), but we should not be smug; Canada's unfunded liabilities (Mostly federal employee pensions) are over $500 billion (the same magnitude as the national debt), and I am unable to come up with any clear figures of how the Provinces and municipalities are doing WRT unfunded liabilities.

The battle over unfunded liabilities will be quite bitter and intense, especially when taxpayers are being toild they are giving up services like police and municipal repairs to pay off unfunded pension liabilties:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/11/18/the-pension-problem-is-worse-than-you-think/



> *The Pension Problem Is Worse Than You Think*
> 
> It’s not just stagnating cities in states like California or Illinois that are running into pension troubles. The pension vise is now tightening around Houston too, an oil-rich metropolis that has been enjoying rapid job growth for years. The Wall Street Journal reports:
> 
> ...


----------



## CougarKing (12 Jan 2016)

BC opposes the Kinder Morgan pipeline:

Vancity Buzz



> *Province opposes Kinder Morgan pipeline after failure to meet requirements*
> By
> Lauren Sundstrom
> 9:47 AM PST, Mon January 11, 2016
> ...



Plus more bad news for the Loonie and oil: the CBC even mentioned today that some experts even see $10 a barrel soon the way things are going.   

Vancity Buzz



> *Canadian dollar slips below 70 cents U.S., first time in 13 years*
> By
> Lauren Sundstrom
> 9:05 AM PST, Tue January 12, 2016
> ...


----------



## Fishbone Jones (12 Jan 2016)

S.M.A. said:
			
		

> Canadian dollar slips below 70 cents U.S., first time in 13 years
> By
> Lauren Sundstrom
> 9:05 AM PST, Tue January 12, 2016
> ...



Yup, and the same shitbirds were in charge then also.


----------



## George Wallace (12 Jan 2016)

recceguy said:
			
		

> Yup, and the same shitbirds were in charge then also.



I was wondering about that very 'coincidence' when the dollar started its first drop.


----------



## Kirkhill (12 Jan 2016)

Northern Peso - good for Quebec and Ontario manufacturers = cheap labour.


----------



## Brad Sallows (12 Jan 2016)

The lower dollar hasn't been as effective as it was last time around.  The tools available to deal with economic malaise remain few.  I am starting to think the Liberals might genuinely be trolling for ideas with their "consultation" tour instead of just manufacturing political cover.


----------



## Kirkhill (12 Jan 2016)

Perhaps because last time around it was about maintaining existing jobs in existing plants.

This time around it is about creating jobs in new plants manufacturing new products..... and a Windmill in every driveway isn't going to cut it.


----------



## Edward Campbell (13 Jan 2016)

At least one large, Canadian, bank based investment firm is explicitly (in a letter to clients) *"shorting" Canada* based, in some measure, on the likelihood that the new, Liberal government will press ahead too many unnecessary, unproductive _stimulus_ projects and too few of the kind that might, actually, help.  :-\


----------



## SeaKingTacco (13 Jan 2016)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> At least one large, Canadian, bank based investment firm is explicitly (in a letter to clients) *"shorting" Canada* based, in some measure, on the likelihood that the new, Liberal government will press ahead too many unnecessary, unproductive _stimulus_ projects and too few of the kind that might, actually, help.  :-\



So, you are saying that elections have consequences?  >


----------



## CougarKing (13 Jan 2016)

More on the Kinder Morgan pipeline issue:

Vancity Buzz



> *Burnaby mayor asks Trudeau to stop Trans Mountain Pipeline review*
> By
> Lauren Sundstrom
> 2:34 PM PST, Tue January 12, 2016
> ...


----------



## Brad Sallows (14 Jan 2016)

Burnaby is a well-run city and an excellent community in which to live, but it's past time to see it deal with the tax base consequences of its NIMBY-ism.


----------



## a_majoor (2 Feb 2016)

Although this is specifically about the United States, the idea that the government can "stimulate" the economy runs deep in Canada, and most of the regulatory roadblocks to innovation and economic growth exist here as well. Now if we had a government commited to declutering the regulatory environment and reducing the 40-45% tax and fee bite on the typical Canadian family of four, then perhaps we would see changed that we liked, rather than watching the vortex expand:

http://www.hoover.org/research/why-fiscal-stimulus-fails



> *Why Fiscal Stimulus Fails *
> by Richard A. Epstein
> Monday, February 1, 2016
> 
> ...


----------



## Jed (2 Feb 2016)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Although this is specifically about the United States, the idea that the government can "stimulate" the economy runs deep in Canada, and most of the regulatory roadblocks to innovation and economic growth exist here as well. Now if we had a government commited to declutering the regulatory environment and reducing the 40-45% tax and fee bite on the typical Canadian family of four, then perhaps we would see changed that we liked, rather than watching the vortex expand:
> 
> http://www.hoover.org/research/why-fiscal-stimulus-fails



That is the only way things are going to get sustainably better.  Good luck convincing all the up and coming millenials and die hard NDP types that there is no such thing as a free lunch.


----------



## a_majoor (10 Feb 2016)

80%. There's a lesson here for us as well. Too bad the Young Dauphin, Kathleen Wynn or Rachel Notley are not going to be reading this:

http://dailysignal.com/2016/02/08/maine-required-childless-adults-to-work-to-get-food-stamps-heres-what-happened/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRovs6vPZKXonjHpfsX56u0uXaKzlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ASMtnN6%2BTFAwTG5toziV8R7jHKM1t0sEQWBHm



> *Maine Required Childless Adults to Work to Get Food Stamps. Here’s What Happened*.
> Robert Rector  /  Rachel Sheffield  / @RachelSheffiel2 / February 08, 2016 / 305 comments
> 
> _Robert Rector is a leading national authority on poverty, the U.S.welfare system and immigration and is a Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow.
> ...


----------



## Colin Parkinson (10 Feb 2016)

I had a friend who ended up on welfare for a bit, divorced and looking after 2 kids. Welfare paid for all of the kids health and dental, getting a job meant losing that level of support and a job that would not come close to covering it. She ended up getting off welfare and doing well, but I would say the setup actually punishes people who find work. I would like to see a program where when a person with dependents who has been on welfare finds a job, the amount they are making is deducted from the welfare payments, so their income does not drop and the benefits continue for sometime and perhaps some training and support to continue to increase their skillsets. Gradually reduce the benefits and wean them off the program, at the same time they have built up experience and are better able to improve on their own.


----------



## Halifax Tar (10 Feb 2016)

Colin P said:
			
		

> I had a friend who ended up on welfare for a bit, divorced and looking after 2 kids. Welfare paid for all of the kids health and dental, getting a job meant losing that level of support and a job that would not come close to covering it. She ended up getting off welfare and doing well, but I would say the setup actually punishes people who find work. I would like to see a program where when a person with dependents who has been on welfare finds a job, the amount they are making is deducted from the welfare payments, so their income does not drop and the benefits continue for sometime and perhaps some training and support to continue to increase their skillsets. Gradually reduce the benefits and wean them off the program, at the same time they have built up experience and are better able to improve on their own.



Or how about we just make it illeagal to pay people less than what a welfare user takes in ?  Hell you could even build in a benifits program


----------



## Edward Campbell (10 Feb 2016)

Halifax Tar said:
			
		

> Or how about we just make it illeagal to pay people less than what a welfare user takes in ?  Hell you could even build in a benifits program




Then you would be setting a _price_ for labour that is totally divorced from the _value_ of that labour and, _in my opinion_, you would be making a very serious economic policy error.

How abut, instead, we allow the market to set the _price_ of labour (wages) based on the value of that labour and then massage our welfare systems so that a person doesn't lose all their benefits as a reward punishment for doing the right thing and finding a job. Suppose Mary get $1,000 per month and she, and her baby, (just barely) survives on that. Now suppose she finds a job that pays $500 per month, How about we cut here welfare by, say, $400 so that she actually does better, on a net, take home, cash in pocket basis, by finding a job. Everyone wins: business wins because it can set the price of labour based on its value, Mary benefits because she gets a job, and essential first step up the ladder and she actually makes more money, and society wins because welfare payments drop but people like Mary actually want to take jobs, even menial, low paying jobs, and, eventually, Mary will do better and will, more likely than not, leave the welfare rolls entirely.


----------



## Jed (10 Feb 2016)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Then you would be setting a _price_ for labour that is totally divorced from the _value_ of that labour and, _in my opinion_, you would be making a very serious economic policy error.
> 
> How abut, instead, we allow the market to set the _price_ of labour (wages) based on the value of that labour and then massage our welfare systems so that a person doesn't lose all their benefits as a reward punishment for doing the right thing and finding a job. Suppose Mary get $1,000 per month and she, and her baby, (just barely) survives on that. Now suppose she finds a job that pays $500 per month, How about we cut here welfare by, say, $400 so that she actually does better, on a net, take home, cash in pocket basis, by finding a job. Everyone wins: business wins because it can set the price of labour based on its value, Mary benefits because she gets a job, and essential first step up the ladder and she actually makes more money, and society wins because welfare payments drop but people like Mary actually want to take jobs, even menial, low paying jobs, and, eventually, Mary will do better and will, more likely than not, leave the welfare rolls entirely.




Dang, ERC. That is far too logical to be implemented. Too many rice bowls will be broken as the new system gets put into place.


----------



## larry Strong (10 Feb 2016)

Halifax Tar said:
			
		

> Or how about we just make it illeagal to pay people less than what a welfare user takes in ?  Hell you could even build in a* benifits program*




Not sure how it works in the CF, however on the street "benefits" are a joint payment by the employer and the employee. And the "Benefits" are not near as good as welfare has, as there is usually a yearly cap on how much money is paid out for sevices......



cheers
Larry


----------



## a_majoor (7 Mar 2016)

With thje rise of the "Living wage" movement even here in Canada, the fact that empirical research proves that minimum wage laws kill jobs is more relevant than ever:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-06/chart-no-minimum-wage-supporting-socialist-wants-you-see



> *The Chart That No Minimum-Wage-Supporting Socialist Wants You To See*
> Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/06/2016 11:30 -0500
> 
> A new report from JP Morgan Chase & Co. finds that the summer employment rate for teenagers is nearing a record low at 34 percent. The report surveyed 15 US cities and found that despite an increase in summer positions available over a two year period, only 38 percent of teens and young adults found summer jobs.
> ...


----------



## CougarKing (8 Mar 2016)

An opportunity in "de-carbonized oil" for Canada?

Calgary Herald



> *Watch out Saudis: Canadian oilpatch leaders motivated to lead a future of 'de-carbonized' oil*
> March 4, 2016 6:00 pm
> 
> (...SNIPPED)
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (9 Mar 2016)

This could fit in so many threads, but since these economic foundations won't shift regardless of who is in 24 Sussex Dr, the White House, or the capitals of the other states and powers (Look at places like Venezuela where they did try to ignore reality) this is reference for everyone who cares to use it. Nothing like shining the bright light of empirical research on Economics:

http://fee.org/articles/5-economic-myths-that-just-wont-die/



> *5 Economic Myths That Just Won’t Die*
> A persistent set of economic narratives still plagues us
> Corey Iacono
> Wednesday, November 05, 2014
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (21 Mar 2016)

Interesting article in "The Economist". As a follower of both classical and Austrian school economics, I have my own views of where the problem is, but it is rather fascinating to see the various views of where the lack of productivity comes from:

http://www.economist.com/node/21695071



> *Doing less with more*
> Low wages are both a cause and a consequence of low productivity
> Mar 19th 2016 | From the print edition
> 
> ...


----------



## Kilo_302 (21 Mar 2016)

When discussing the deficit the Liberals are going to run, it's helpful to consider what the banks are saying about it. 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/analysts-on-tomorrows-budget-deficit-paranoia-is-mind-bogglingly-stupid/article29308661/



> Awaiting the budget
> 
> Canada’s new government is expected this week to unveil a stimulus budget with a deficit in the area of $30-billion.
> 
> ...


----------



## SeaKingTacco (21 Mar 2016)

Of course bankers like debt. How do you suppose they make money?

QED.


----------



## Kilo_302 (21 Mar 2016)

SeaKingTacco said:
			
		

> Of course bankers like debt. How do you suppose they make money?
> 
> QED.



That's definitely an element to this. But in the long run, the banks need economic growth just like everyone else.


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver (21 Mar 2016)

SeaKingTacco said:
			
		

> Of course bankers like debt. How do you suppose they make money?
> 
> QED.



Actually, SKT, banks invest very little, if anything, in government debt instruments, other than the minimum that banking laws imposes on them as minimum "safe" investment holdings. And why should they? As AAA or AAA+ rated debt, it pays very little in interest as it is always at the low end of the interest rates spectrum and it does not qualify for asset leveraging.

The real way banks make money is on the multiplication effect of leveraged assets: by increasing the amount of deposits people make at their bank (why do you think they work hard at convincing you to open accounts at their bank vs another one?).

Here's how it works: I open an account and deposit $1000 at the bank, increasing the bank's assets by that $1000. Because it is now in the bank's assets and the "reserve" obligations of the bank are set at 10%, that bank may now borrow from the central bank $10,000 at the central bank prime rate. They then loan that $10,000 to various borrowers at various rates going from their prime rate (always higher than the central bank prime rate) to well above. Assuming an average of 3% differential and that they are paying me 3% on my deposit, they have now made $270 on my $1,000 deposit at year end ($300 - $30 they pay me): That's 27% rate of return on my money. They are not allowed to do that with government debt instruments, as government does not allow borrowing as against its own debt.

So they do like debt, but consumer and commercial one, not government debt instrument.

The financial institutions that like government debt instruments are usually the insurance companies and the pension fund/ asset funds managers.


----------



## a_majoor (23 Mar 2016)

Schadenfreude is a wonderful word:


----------



## a_majoor (18 Apr 2016)

A commenter on NextBigFuture gives an amazing smack down AND an Econ 101 lesson at the same time. This should be required reading for anyone in Canada who advocates for "living wage" legislation, supports the LEAP Manifesto or otherwise indulges in magical thinking. OF course their response wold not be to logically parse the argument and try to find the flaws, but maybe answer "because 2016" instead. As for the main post, the reason we are in a global economic meltdown is because of the massive debt and credit bubble built up since the 1960's. F.A Hayek described this a long time ago, but no one is apparently paying attention :

http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/04/global-economy-faltering-from-long.html



> ShrillaryForPrison2016 NBF Elder in reply toeripefJust saw the news that USA now...more » 3 hours ago
> Just saw the news that USA now only has 5% unemployment, pretty close to full employment
> 
> Then please explain why labor force participation levels are at their lowest since the Great Depression? Why are they despite the 'low unemployment'? Because the unemployment figures are totally rigged Chinese-style, that's why.
> ...


----------



## CougarKing (17 Jun 2016)

Please note the highlighted portion about Chevron seeking to sell off its facilities in Burnaby, BC:

Reuters



> *Global oil majors look to shed refineries as crude prices rebound*
> By By Jessica Resnick-Ault | Reuters – 9 hours ago
> 
> NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global oil majors Chevron Corp and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are putting small refineries on the auction block as they look to trim lower-margin assets in the face of headwinds from rising crude oil prices.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (18 Jun 2016)

The State of Texas has an economy virtually the same size as that of Canada, with only a fraction of the workers. This is the sort of economic efficiency that Edward has been advocating for a long time, and which *we* as a people need to emulate if we are to dig ourselves out of the Liberal debt trap. The ratio of workers between New York and the Republic of Korea is even more astonishing:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/california-economy-larger-than-world.html



> *California economy larger than World Number 6 France and Texas is ahead of tenth place Canada*
> 
> America’s largest state economy is California, which produced $2.46 trillion of economic output in 2015, just slightly above the GDP of France during the same period of $2.42 trillion. California's has a workforce of about 19 million compared to an employment level in France of slightly more than 25 million workers. It takes 32% (and 6 million) more workers in France to produce the same economic output last year as California.
> 
> ...


----------



## CougarKing (30 Jun 2016)

The latest stumbling block in the Northern Gateway saga in BC:

CBC



> *Northern Gateway pipeline approval overturned
> Federal Court of Appeal finds Canada failed to consult with First Nations on pipeline project*
> 
> By Jason Proctor, CBC News Posted: Jun 30, 2016 9:44 AM PT Last Updated: Jun 30, 2016 2:07 PM PT
> ...


----------



## Colin Parkinson (1 Jul 2016)

S.M.A. said:
			
		

> Please note the highlighted portion about Chevron seeking to sell off its facilities in Burnaby, BC:
> 
> Reuters



Yes my sister is involved, they are looking at selling all assets and then leasing them back. The problem will be is it would be a very small diversion in another company, but Canadian consumers and laws are very different than the US, which already leads to issues with the parent company.


----------



## Fishbone Jones (1 Jul 2016)

S.M.A. said:
			
		

> The latest stumbling block in the Northern Gateway saga in BC:
> 
> CBC



It wouldn't matter if they gave 10 years to consult aboriginals. The answer would be the same. Money talks, bullshit walks.

We aren't in the 1700s anymore. National security and commerce should not be held up by First Nations. They can get onside or be dealt out of the deal altogether. I'm tired of FN holding our economy hostage.


----------



## Kirkhill (9 Aug 2016)

> One of the irrational things about the business of politics is that the federal government gets blamed or praised for the state of the economy when in fact, as economists will readily testify, Ottawa is only a marginal player in the grander scheme of things. It’s the global currents that count.



A curious comment from Lawrence Martin: one with which I am in total agreement.

However, I am not one of those regularly baying for government intervention. 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/dark-clouds-of-stagnation-threaten-sunny-ways/article31316098/


----------



## Altair (12 Aug 2016)

I wonder if there is any way for the liberals to steal this idea for pipelines.

http://www.financialpost.com/m/wp/fp-comment/blog.html?b=business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/lawrence-solomon-theresa-may-may-become-one-of-the-most-radical-western-leaders-of-the-century



> British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was one of the most radical Western leaders of the 20th century. Today’s prime minister, Theresa May, seems set to be one of the most radical of the 21st.
> 
> The revolutionary May approach can be seen in her plan this week to develop Britain’s shale gas, which for a decade has been stymied both by opposition from local residents, who have been fearful that their environment would be contaminated, and from environmental groups who have stoked those fears. May is breaking this impasse by giving the residents a startling upside to shale gas development.
> 
> ...


Brilliant. This in and of itself makes brexit worth it by making her prime minister. 

Back to canada, I imagine giving local residents along the pipeline route the government's share of royalties(taxable) should kill most opposition to it.


----------



## MilEME09 (12 Aug 2016)

Very radical and different approach, and I very much hope it works out for britain, the amount of money the tax payers of these towns would then have would be spent back into the british economy, driving up consumer spending, and directly, the demand by consumers for goods and services.


----------



## Good2Golf (12 Aug 2016)

MilEME09 said:
			
		

> Very radical and different approach, and I very much hope it works out for britain, the amount of money the tax payers of these towns would then have would be spent back into the british economy, driving up consumer spending, and directly, the demand by consumers for goods and services.



Let alone, build together with the US to kick Vlad and the Saudis in the teeth with potentially further reduced global oil prices...double win!  :nod:


----------



## Lightguns (12 Aug 2016)

MilEME09 said:
			
		

> Very radical and different approach, and I very much hope it works out for britain, the amount of money the tax payers of these towns would then have would be spent back into the british economy, driving up consumer spending, and directly, the demand by consumers for goods and services.



Works in Pennsylvania, where fracking has allowed hundreds of farmers to remain on their land in the farming business with modernized equipment.  Imagine....


----------



## Kirkhill (12 Aug 2016)

Slightly different approach to Alaska - where everyone in the State gets a dividend check.  Same principle but a tighter focus in the case of the Brits and Pennsylvania.

And is it really different to what the First Nations and BC are requesting in any event?  The issue is to whom does the check get made out:  The Chiefs and the Government or the "indians".


----------



## Altair (12 Aug 2016)

Chris Pook said:
			
		

> Slightly different approach to Alaska - where everyone in the State gets a dividend check.  Same principle but a tighter focus in the case of the Brits and Pennsylvania.
> 
> And is it really different to what the First Nations and BC are requesting in any event?  The issue is to whom does the check get made out:  The Chiefs and the Government or the "indians".


Well,  the British approach cuts out the middle man. In this case the province and the Chiefs.  Cut a check to local residents only, not some middle man who walks off with half of it or more while the citizens see hardly any of it.

I also believe equalization payments should be handed out this way. Cut a check to every citizen of the province instead of the province itself. Watch them be forced to either try to collect that money from their own citizens or clean up their financial act.


----------



## YZT580 (12 Aug 2016)

Can you imagine what that will do to the value of real estate?  Instead of going down or being depressed, industrial area houses will only be available at a premium.


----------



## Kirkhill (12 Aug 2016)

Altair said:
			
		

> Well,  the British approach cuts out the middle man. In this case the province and the Chiefs.  Cut a check to local residents only, not some middle man who walks off with half of it or more while the citizens see hardly any of it.
> 
> I also believe equalization payments should be handed out this way. Cut a check to every citizen of the province instead of the province itself. Watch them be forced to either try to collect that money from their own citizens or clean up their financial act.



It was also the rationale for both the Canada Pension Plan and the Baby Bonus - Ottawa became relevant to every individual Canadian, leap-frogging the Provincial Governments.

And I appreciate  YZT's point.  If you are going to muck up my scenery with noisy and inefficient wind turbines, as well as the power lines and substations, the least you can do is pay me for the inconvenience.   Or if you are going to subject me to the smell of fries being cooked or bread being made..... (I kid you not.  Those complaints have been made).


----------



## jollyjacktar (12 Aug 2016)

I had to laugh when they were putting up a turbine back home.  Some of the locals were claiming they were feeling funny just driving by the half erected tower.  The turbine and blades were still weeks away from appearing at that stage.  I believe the squawks diminished when the tower was finally up and running and folks found their noses didn't actually bleed if you were within 10 miles of the site...


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## Kirkhill (16 Aug 2016)

A Brit arguing that a lack of government is good for business - Is that even debatable?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/15/no-government-no-worries-the-economy-will-be-just-fine/


----------



## Colin Parkinson (19 Aug 2016)

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/abondoned-churchill/

snip-

_The massive superstructure of the port is visible from everywhere, and the main street ends right at its gates. When I pulled up in my rental pickup, these were open—the guard shack empty.

Other than the concrete elevators and the loading gantries there was not much to see. A rusting tugboat sits on blocks. There are no train cars waiting to be unloaded, and no ships to take on cargo. Other than seagulls and the wind, it was quiet.

At 4:30 p.m., though, a few people began to emerge and walk toward their cars. This was the last shift, leaving for the last time.

The idea of building a deep-water port on Hudson Bay began in the 19th century. It was conceived as a great nation-building enterprise, a more direct route to Europe, and a strategic gateway giving Canada an indisputable claim to the Arctic. The rail line from The Pas took six years to build, cutting through the forest and over the muskeg. The first grain shipment left in 1931.

In 1997, the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien sold the railroad and port to Omnitrax, based out of Denver. The port soon saw record volumes of exports being shipped to Europe, the Middle East, and even Africa.

Then Stephen Harper’s Conservatives ended the Wheat Board monopoly, and farmers were free to sell their grain to whomever they chose. They chose companies shipping out of Thunder Bay or Vancouver. So the ships stopped coming, and in July Omnitrax announced it was closing the port and ending its rail freight service, too_

-snip-


----------



## George Wallace (27 Aug 2016)

Surplus to Deficit.  REALLY!  Is this really the way to go?

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.



> Ottawa posts $1B deficit in Q1, down from $5B surplus last year
> By Staff	The Canadian Press
> August 26, 2016 11:23 am
> 
> ...



LINK


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver (27 Aug 2016)

Technically, one of the few things that can simultaneously lower corporate income tax revenues, non-resident income tax revenue and excise tax revenue simultaneously is a decrease in exports. That can't be a good thing.


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## Kirkhill (27 Aug 2016)

OGBD - its all good

Our future is as wardens of the world's biggest park - and they will be so grateful to us that they will shower us with Ladas and priority tickets for the lineups at GUM's.


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## CougarKing (29 Sep 2016)

Those who voted for Trudeau since they thought he was more "environmentally conscious" might punish him in the next election for this. They might well be voting for Elizabeth May next election.   :

Let's see if this goes forward from here. As Rona Ambrose said, if I can recall correctly, this project won't produce jobs unless there are actual "shovels in the ground" already.

Daily Hive



> *Trudeau government approves Petronas' $36-billion LNG project in BC*
> 
> Kenneth Chan Sep 27, 2016 6:12 pm
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (7 Oct 2016)

Anyone who voted for the Liberals on the basis of policy should receive a mental health examination immediately.

Like everything else, projects and initiatives will be examined for the amount of votes or kickback they can generate on an individual basis, not on how well they support any sort of overarching philosophy (even if only in the breach). If you were looking for _that_, you could have voted for the Conservatives or NDP, Canada's two major transformative parties.


----------



## Brad Sallows (7 Oct 2016)

"Trudeau government approves Petronas' $36-billion LNG project in BC"

And the pipeline to connect sources to the delivery terminal is in what state at present?


----------



## Colin Parkinson (25 Oct 2016)

PRGT has applied for early access works and has done most of the route survey, now they wait for the PNW LNG final investment decision


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## Altair (16 Jan 2017)

Also, apparently Canada is doomed. With the trifecta of having lower corporate taxes than Canada, no carbon tax and the border tax implemented on good imported into the USA Canada is going to look a lot less competitive in a very short order. 35 percent to 15 percent. 10 per cent lower than the federal-provincial corporate tax rate in Canada. 

Ouch.


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## Good2Golf (16 Jan 2017)

The trifecta you describe pales in comparison to the effectiveness of McGWynnty's impact on the soaring cost of energy and doing business in Ontario. :nod:

Regards
G2G


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## daftandbarmy (16 Jan 2017)

Uh oh...

Trump Claims America Should Never Have Given Canada Its Independence

http://www.burrardstreetjournal.com/trump-canada-independence-was-mistake/


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## Altair (16 Jan 2017)

Good2Golf said:
			
		

> The trifecta you describe pales in comparison to the effectiveness of McGWynnty's impact on the soaring cost of energy and doing business in Ontario. :nod:
> 
> Regards
> G2G


That's fine, Quebec to the east has cheap electricity and plenty of manufacturing capacity. Amazon picked Montreal as the location for its new cloud computing data center recently citing low electricity costs.

Jobs can shift east or west in Canada based on things like taxes or electricity costs, with no net loss for Canada overall, the fear now is jobs Canada wide shifting south due to the trifecta mentioned earlier. 


			
				daftandbarmy said:
			
		

> Uh oh...
> 
> Trump Claims America Should Never Have Given Canada Its Independence
> 
> http://www.burrardstreetjournal.com/trump-canada-independence-was-mistake/


That's funny. I knew about the Onion, did not know about BS journal.


----------



## Altair (23 Jan 2017)

So TPP is dead and NAFTA is to be "renegotiated" 

Hard times coming for Canada it appears.


----------



## sailorprivateer (27 Jan 2017)

GM just moved 600 jobs from Ingersoll, ON to Mexico. I think this is just the beginning of outsourcing jobs from Canada now we have a combined jacked-up hydro, labour, carbon tax, and etc.


----------



## QV (28 Jan 2017)

sailorprivateer said:
			
		

> GM just moved 600 jobs from Ingersoll, ON to Mexico. I think this is just the beginning of outsourcing jobs from Canada now we have a combined jacked-up hydro, labour, carbon tax, and etc.



They won't take those jobs out of the US because Trump, but Canada has Trudeau so we're just begging to be crushed. 

I wonder how many of those 600 voted Liberal last election?

Liberanos were counting on other world leaders to gouge their populace with more and more taxes, but they have been Trumped.


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## sailorprivateer (28 Jan 2017)

QV said:
			
		

> They won't take those jobs out of the US because Trump, but Canada has Trudeau so we're just begging to be crushed.
> 
> I wonder how many of those 600 voted Liberal last election?
> 
> Liberanos were counting on other world leaders to gouge their populace with more and more taxes, but they have been Trumped.


In my opinion, they want to focus in Latin America as they are thriving there. Here's a 2009 article from LA Times:



> BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, AND LOS ANGELES — For all its miscues at home, General Motors Corp. has built a powerhouse operation in Latin America, where its fuel-efficient vehicles could play a crucial role in returning the battered company to health.
> 
> Since it filed for bankruptcy a month ago, the automaker has been striking deals to shed much of its operations, including its Hummer, Saturn and Saab brands and its Opel division in Europe. GM is closing more North American factories, laying off workers and slashing its U.S. dealership ranks.
> 
> But despite rumors this spring, GM's thriving Latin America operations are likely to escape the ax, analysts said.



If my assumption is right, GM Ingersoll workers are mostly live in Oxford County and some in London area. The former is under Oxford riding and it has been represented by a Conservative MP since 2004. While London has 4 ridings: Both London North Centre and London West ridings are under Liberal MP, London-Fanshawe is under an NDP MP, Elgin-Middlesex-London is under a Conservative MP. Then again, it's only my assumption that they may be some workers from London and don't have info on how much GM workers are from the city. Purely speculation on my side.


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## George Wallace (28 Jan 2017)

QV said:
			
		

> I wonder how many of those 600 voted Liberal last election?



It depends on whether or not they were "Liberal Lifers" or "Diehard Union Followers" vise non-partisan or Conservative/NDP/Green/etc. Party Card Holders.


----------



## sailorprivateer (28 Jan 2017)

George Wallace said:
			
		

> It depends on whether or not they were "Liberal Lifers" or "Diehard Union Followers" vise non-partisan or Conservative/NDP/Green/etc. Party Card Holders.


Remember when Trudeau got a standing ovation when he showed up at a Unifor conference? lmfao... Who knew 5 months later their 600 members will be out of work this summer. 

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/news/trudeau-gets-standing-ovation-while-outlining-labour-priorities-at-unifor-conference/vi-BBvZXi4


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## Cdn Blackshirt (29 Jan 2017)

Heard Unifor rep interviewed on radio and he was pissed. 

He said a couple of things about GM's record profits, but his main point was that until Canadian consumers get in GM's face, this will continue.  He added the most frustrating part is that GM continues to shift production to Mexico where they don'the even buy GMonday, much less the trucks that are the issue in this case.

It may be against Trudeau's sensibilities but he should be trying to get on same side as Trump.with China and Mexico on other side, otherwise I think Canadian manufacturing is about to get destroyed.


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## George Wallace (29 Jan 2017)

Cdn Blackshirt said:
			
		

> It may be against Trudeau's sensibilities but he should be trying to get on same side as Trump.with China and Mexico on other side, otherwise I think Canadian manufacturing is about to get destroyed.



That barn door has been open for quite some time now.  It may already be too late to close it.


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## YZT580 (29 Jan 2017)

With the price of electricity and a carbon tax as well, there is little chance of industry remaining competitive in this country.  Expect more closures and more layoffs as industries relocate to a more welcoming environment.  For proof, take a drive around Belgium or France and count the shuttered factories and empty parking lots at Opel and others.


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## a_majoor (21 Apr 2017)

Even Greens are not fooled:

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/04/17/bill-mckibben-calls-out-green-hypocrisy/



> *Bill McKibben Calls Out Green Hypocrisy*
> 
> Everyone’s favorite environmentalist Bill McKibben ranted against Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, scolding the public for “swooning” for the leader who, in McKibben’s own words, “sure is cute” and who “appears to have recently quit a boy band.” Trudeau’s sin? Green hypocrisy. McKibben writes for the Guardian:
> 
> ...



Of course most governments (including ours) are beholden to various interest groups who get their power and privilege from how things are set up today; don't expect decoupling to come from government mandates, indeed mandated "green" energy is what is driving up costs and decreasing reliability. "Decoupling" will likely come from individuals and industry disconnecting from the grid IOT have a reliable, less expensive source of energy (co generation and micro generation in this generation of technology).


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## a_majoor (9 Jul 2017)

While the specific example is from the United State, the general case is proof positive that Kenyan economics in all its forms (including stimulus spending, deficits etc. simply does not work. (Remember, this is distinct from borrowing money to invest, politicians are notorious for deeming whatever they spend is an "investment", even when it is not). Perhaps the only positive thing that running $30 billion deficits into the foreseeable future is wealth destruction on that scale will be the deflationary counterweight to the inflationary effects of pumping vast amounts of money into a slowly growing, stagnant or shrinking economy.

https://fee.org/articles/cash-for-clunkers-was-a-complete-failure/



> *Cash for Clunkers Was a Complete Failure*
> Daniel J. Mitchell
> Thursday, July 06, 2017
> 
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (28 Oct 2017)

As Edward constantly reminds us, Canada needs to massively increase productivity. Here is a very interesting example (and one which isn't very intuitive). Look for many more such implementations as robots become more flexible, versatile and developed:

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/10/robotic-crab-meat-extraction-to-bring-more-revenue-back-to-canada.html#more-138398



> *Robotic Crab meat extraction to bring more revenue back to Canada*
> brian wang | October 28, 2017 |
> 
> The world’s first full-on crab plant robot sits inside a tall, plastic chamber roughly the size of a shipping container. A conveyer belt carries the splayed crab into the chamber, where a robot scoops them up and places them on one of two plastic saddles.
> ...


----------



## Colin Parkinson (9 Nov 2017)

State of Alaska is making deals directly with Chinese companies in lieu of any company stepping up. BC can do similar, by completing some of the unfinished environmental assessments, so areas identified can be marketed as "shovel ready" for X size and type of project, with FN agreements already in place.

Canada/BC should be pushing engineered wood products to China, what we can offer is quality products with engineering certificates that builders can depend upon. A real issue throughout SE Asia. Russia is trying to move wood products from Siberia to Asia and can out compete us with basic lumber. In fact in the 90's BC lumbers associations were suggesting that some Russian wood sources make suffer from radioactive contamination in hopes of making customers reluctant to look elsewhere for lumber.


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## a_majoor (28 Nov 2017)

While this is a paid advertisement on NBF, it does point out that oil sand extraction technology is still advancing rapidly. I also note the emphasis on "blockchains", the fundamental technology behind Bitcoins and other cryptocurrency. It seem that this technology (essentially distributed ledgers) has far greater utility than I had imagined beyond cryptocurrency transactions and "Bitcoin mining":

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/11/tech-breakthrough-could-transform-the-oil-sector.html#more-139645



> *Tech Breakthrough Could Transform The Oil Sector*
> brian wang | November 28, 2017 |
> 
> As Saudi Arabia spins from crisis to crisis, U.S. oil hasn’t missed a beat. It’s stronger and more resilient than ever– and it has nothing to do with OPEC oil production cuts.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (23 Jan 2018)

An interesting article in today's NP by Andrew Coyne, pointing out some very serious long term weakness in Canada's economic foundations. High taxes, energy prices and barriers to investment by both the Federal and Provincial governments are starving Canadian business of investment capital, and the government has been less than  stellar in handling free trade or increasing trade with the US, China or the TPP. Fun article here: http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-an-attractive-place-to-invest-are-you-serious-prime-minister

The conclusions are very sobering.


----------



## NavyShooter (23 Jan 2018)

2008 crash...here we come?


----------



## Rifleman62 (23 Jan 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/justin-trudeau-to-push-middle-class-interests-as-he-heads-to-davos

*Justin Trudeau to push middle class interests as he heads to Davos* - 21 Jan 18


Sure, the middle class. As if he knows anything about the middle class.

See  Thucydides post above. Canada open for business? BS.


https://globalnews.ca/news/3979253/justin-trudeau-davos-world-economic-forum/

*What happens at Davos and why is Justin Trudeau going?* - 22 Jan 18

Extract: The author of the internationally bestselling book The Black Swan describes the World Economic Forum at Davos as follows.

The invite-only event in the Swiss Alps, said Nassim N. Taleb in 2011, is about “chasing successful people who want to be seen with other successful people. That’s the game.”  Selfie heaven. 

Canada's expenditure for approx. 4 days of swaning : On top of the $622,000 for five tickets, are the costs of accommodations, security, food, booze and transport, and the retinue of staff tagging along for the ride.


If you don't like the Fraser Institute, please post a rebuttal study.

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/effect-on-canadian-families-of-changes-to-federal-income-tax-and-cpp-payroll-tax

*
The Effect on Canadian Families of Changes to Federal Income Tax and CPP Payroll Tax* - 11 Jan 18

Summary

Since coming into office, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has repeatedly claimed to have reduced taxes for middle class Canadian families—a claim based solely on the federal government’s reduction to the second lowest personal income tax rate from 22 to 20.5 percent. However, a recent study found that when all the Trudeau government’s major changes to the personal income tax system are properly accounted for (including the elimina­tion of income splitting and other tax credits), income taxes have been raised, not lowered, on the vast majority (81 percent) of middle income Canadian families.

In addition to enacting changes to the personal income tax system, the federal gov­ernment has also announced other significant tax changes that will take effect in the com­ing years. For instance, payroll taxes will be increased to fund an expansion of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), with the first increase tak­ing place in January 2019. The dramatic in­crease in the CPP payroll tax, which was a joint venture with the provinces but initiated largely by the federal government, will be fully imple­mented in 2025. This raises the prospect of even more middle income families in Canada paying higher taxes beyond what the changes to the federal income tax system would alone indicate.

This report measures the impact of the fed­eral government’s personal income tax chang­es and the fully implemented CPP payroll tax increase on the amount of taxes that Canadian families will pay. (A family is defined as a parent or parents with a child or children under age 18.) It finds that once fully implemented, virtually all (98.8 percent) of middle income Canadian fami­lies with children (with incomes ranging from $77,839 to $110,201) will pay higher taxes. And they will pay, on average, $2,260 more tax each year.

In fact, when looking at all 2.988 million families with children in Canada (excluding those in Quebec), 2.756 million, or 92.2 percent, will pay higher taxes—$2,218 more, on average, each year. Indeed, once the increase in CPP pay­roll taxes is fully implemented, nearly all Cana­dian families—regardless of where they stand in the income distribution—will pay higher taxes.


----------



## YZT580 (23 Jan 2018)

No one can say they weren't warned.  For those who supported the liberal party, as you write your cheque to the exchequer this coming March, ask yourself one simple question: 'was anyone but Harper' worth 2000 dollars?


----------



## Altair (23 Jan 2018)

YZT580 said:
			
		

> No one can say they weren't warned.  For those who supported the liberal party, as you write your cheque to the exchequer this coming March, ask yourself one simple question: 'was anyone but Harper' worth 2000 dollars?


I get 6000 dollars from the government every year from the CCB, ,  so net profit for me. 

I'm guessing the fraser institute didn't factor that in. 


			
				Thucydides said:
			
		

> An interesting article in today's NP by Andrew Coyne, pointing out some very serious long term weakness in Canada's economic foundations. High taxes, energy prices and barriers to investment by both the Federal and Provincial governments are starving Canadian business of investment capital, and the government has been less than  stellar in handling free trade or increasing trade with the US, China or the TPP. Fun article here: http://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-an-attractive-place-to-invest-are-you-serious-prime-minister
> 
> The conclusions are very sobering.


Also,  TPP is a go.


----------



## YZT580 (23 Jan 2018)

You are one of the lucky few.  My hit is 1400.


----------



## pbi (24 Jan 2018)

I'm one of those people who voted for this Govt. I did it after a lifetime of voting Tory (and years of serving under both parties), and the decision was not an easy one.   I had two primary reasons:

-IMHO all Canadian governments begin to go stale, and then start rotting in their second term. It may be due to inherent failures in our system, but I'm not sure.This rot is characterized by arrogance, secrecy, duplicity and, too often, evidence of petty corruption. I felt that the Tories were beginning to get stinky on all counts; and

-Despite the fact that Harper was himself quite a pragmatic and moderate politician, I sensed that the party was drifting rightward at a steady pace. I don't like "The Right" anymore than I like "The Left". People who choose to define their understanding of the world through bumper-sticker thinking are irritating and possibly dangerous. The Tories, I thought (and particularly during their internal leadership campaign) were beginning to show increasing signs of a tilt towards a brand of social conservatism that I don't like and don't want.

I had some nascent misgivings about our PM, but I decided to cast my vote for the Liberals. Since that day, I have become increasingly disillusioned with him, and with some of the hideously bad ideas and policies which they have come up with. I'm sure some members are smirking and saying "Dumbass..told ya so!", but maybe that assumes I didn't think about my choice.

I'm particularly concerned by two issues: what appears to be a terrible mishandling of our NAFTA approach to the US; and this recent business about funding for summer jobs programs. On the first, while I believe we have every right (and duty) to stand up to Trump and his gang of Nativists/Isolationists and not give in to US bully tactics, the Govt must remember that we are a trading nation, primarily with the US. If that gets arsed up, many Canadians will suffer (even ones who think they hate Free Trade). I'm not confident here, at all.

On the second one, the Govt is doing something on ideological lines which, if the Tories were to have done it, the Liberals would have screamed the House down. It is setting a terrible and dangerous precedent. Govt funding may be susceptible to party politics in any nation, but I find this policy to be very short sighted. Don't get me wrong: I'm the farthest thing from a religious fundamentalist, and I am still somewhat ambivalent about abortions, but to deny funding on the grounds the Govt has laid down is wrong. It may bite them quite badly, especially amongst the considerable Catholic part of their constituency.

I will try to keep an open mind, but the way things are going if the Tories sort themselves out and can become more like the good old "Red Tories" of PCP days, and able to avoid the temptation of courting extreme social conservatives, they will probably get my vote next time around. Damn, I even thought that Kellie Leitch made a bit of sense, now and then


----------



## a_majoor (25 Jan 2018)

While companies can spin it in many different ways, the end result is they move to where their ROI is greater:

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/01/24/Campbell-Soup-to-close-Toronto-plant-move-production-to-US/4881516853596/



> *Campbell Soup to close Toronto plant, move production to U.S.*
> By Ray Downs  |  Jan. 24, 2018 at 11:35 PM
> 
> Jan. 24 (UPI) -- The Campbell Soup Company announced Wednesday that it will shut down its Toronto plant and move operations to its three U.S. factories.
> ...


----------



## a_majoor (26 Jan 2018)

The Prime Minister's reactions to US tax cuts and how to remain competitive given the rapidly changing economic environment south of our border is.....curious. The National Post article discusses his speech at Davros and some analysis by Jack Mintz, a tax expert from the University of Calgary. The prognosis is not good (especially when you also consider the US is kicking off gigantic production gains with high quality shale oil, which is very "sweet" and easy to process, putting our already hamstrung oil industry at risk as well).

http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/john-ivison-trudeaus-davos-man-message-cant-hold-back-the-flow-of-capital-from-private-corporations


----------



## Rifleman62 (26 Jan 2018)

> Campbell Soup to close Toronto plant, move production to U.S.



Joining: 

1.  Kellogg's London officially ends cereal production 23 Dec 14, - 500 jobs. All Kellogg products sold in Canada are from the USA, except Mini-Wheats cereal plant in Belleville, Ont

2.  Heinz ceased operations in Leamington in June 14. -1000 jobs.

3. Kraft Foods,  St. Marys, Ontario, Canada. 2015  - 214 jobs.


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/kellogg-to-close-london-ont-plant-next-year/article15840106/

The province (Ontario) has shed more than 33,000 jobs in the factory sector in the past 12 months (2013)


----------



## Altair (26 Jan 2018)

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> Joining:
> 
> 1.  Kellogg's London officially ends cereal production 23 Dec 14, - 500 jobs. All Kellogg products sold in Canada are from the USA, except Mini-Wheats cereal plant in Belleville, Ont
> 
> ...


Wouldn't worry too much about ontario.

It simply appears that the economy is adjusting to a post auto industry

https://globalnews.ca/news/3949024/canada-unemployment-rates-breakdown-by-province/



> Ontario experienced a small decrease in unemployment by approximately 0.9 percentage points, to 5.5 per cent. However, Ontario saw an increase of employment rates by almost three per cent in 2017, which is more than double the province’s growth rate in each of the previous two years, with an additional 176,000 people employed by year end.
> 
> The primary industries that saw increases include wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, professional, scientific and technical services, and transportation and warehousing.



It's better to look at the big picture here.

Quebec and BC are also doing pretty well.


----------



## Good2Golf (26 Jan 2018)

Altair said:
			
		

> Wouldn't worry too much about ontario.
> 
> It simply appears that the economy is adjusting to a post auto industry
> 
> ...



Since those jobs didn't go anywhere else in Canada, Canada also lost the jobs, so it should concern you...and other Canadians.  Notwithstanding Ontario being turned into a "Have-Not" province by the cumulative effect of 'befuddled' provincial governmental policies, particularly as related to exponentially rising consumer and producer costs (Wynnelectricity, etc.), loss of jobs out of Ontario (and Canada) will make it "Have-Notter" and reduce Canada's GDP, neither are good things, n'est-ce pas?

Regards
G2G


----------



## a_majoor (26 Jan 2018)

Worrying about Ontario may be like worrying about the band's playlist on the Titanic. Jack Mintz has a fuller explanation of how US Tax cuts will affect Canada, and what actually needs to be done. The full article will be posted in the long articles section:

http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/jack-mintz-if-trudeau-ever-accepts-reality-heres-how-he-can-save-canadas-competitiveness

https://army.ca/forums/threads/127262.0.html


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## pbi (26 Jan 2018)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> The Prime Minister's reactions to US tax cuts and how to remain competitive given the rapidly changing economic environment south of our border is.....curious. The National Post article discusses his speech at Davros and some analysis by Jack Mintz, a tax expert from the University of Calgary. The prognosis is not good (especially when you also consider the US is kicking off gigantic production gains with high quality shale oil, which is very "sweet" and easy to process, putting our already hamstrung oil industry at risk as well).
> 
> http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/john-ivison-trudeaus-davos-man-message-cant-hold-back-the-flow-of-capital-from-private-corporations



I'm not really sure he has grasped the reality of what is happening. Like I said elsewhere, I was reticent when I voted Liberal, but now I'm worried.  They seem to be at a loss when it comes to the economy. Perhaps he forgets that poor countries usually aren't very socially progressive. It's normally the other way around. They accused the Tories oif ideologically based decision making but I think I'm seeing a bit too much of it just now.


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## SeaKingTacco (9 Feb 2018)

I note that Stats Canada reported today that over 100k part time jobs were lost in Jan 18. If only there was some correlating explanation...  :


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## Brad Sallows (1 Mar 2018)

Too bad everyone focuses on the number of jobs.  What would be more useful is to know the net compensation gain or loss, since there is not one universal wage / salary.


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## Piece of Cake (2 Mar 2018)

SeaKingTacco said:
			
		

> I note that Stats Canada reported today that over 100k part time jobs were lost in Jan 18. If only there was some correlating explanation...  :



The number 14 comes to mind


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## a_majoor (3 Apr 2018)

US tax reform and the general expansion of the US economy is drawing Canadian investment dollars south, to such an extent that the CEO of RBC is urging the government to clamp down on investment outflows. Now I personally think this is counterproductive, since resources should flow to where they can maximize returns and if the Liberals are going to choke Canada's economy, investors need to have a place to go. (It is also counterproductive because idle capital in Canada generates no returns or tax revenues either).

http://www.baystreet.ca/articles/economiccommentary/37709/Cross-Border-Investments-Gathering-Steam-RBC



> *Cross-Border Investments Gathering Steam: RBC*
> 
> The man who runs one of Canada's largest banks is urging the Trudeau government to slow the rate investment capital from this country to the United States — because, he warns, it's already leaving in "real time."
> 
> ...


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