Nevertheless, I think it is a silly ban because the insurance companies should be the first to deal with this issue instead of law enforcement. The insurance companies can charge higher rates to people who refuse to install cell-phone jammers in their vehicles. [They could do the same with breathalyzers too.] The jammers can be de-activated when the engine stops.

From the perspective of the insurance companies, the ban is highly convenient. It offloads some of their costs onto the taxpayer.

But I digress.

The apologists are out in full force trying to calm down irate British Columbians, helping to see that they are “acting irrationally” in response to the jack up of up to 10 cents a liter at the pumps since Campbell’s “2.3 cent” carbon tax was implemented.

Of course, in addition to slapping us in the face at the pump, we are being slapped in the face with our heating and our cooking - propane and natural gas are also spiked in this carbon tax.

Now, I’ve actually got natural gas heat and electric heat in my house.  I could just shut off the main furnace and heat my home with baseboard heaters and space heaters.  But you know what?  Natural gas is more efficient in my case.

But what will happen when British Columbians begin to shut off their natural gas forced-air heating?  Well, electrical use will spike.  And what do you think will happen to Hydro rates?  They’ll go through the roof as BC Hydro compensates for their shortfall in electrical production by buying more energy off the grid - not to mention supporting all those old coal-fired and gas-fired power plants which won’t be able to be taken out of service because of “demand”.

What a stupid tax.  If this goes national, we aren’t just going to see an NEP-style crash where Alberta collapses and the rest of the country goes into recession.  The cycle of spiralling energy costs will not be able to be offset with more public money from all the new taxes.  Government sucking money out of the economy, no matter how many public works projects they engage in to “create jobs” will never make as many jobs as leaving the money in the economy in the first place.

I think we’ll be revisiting a genuine depression.

Then they win a Grey Cup for the first time in decades.

Strangely coincidentally, their economy begins to ride a wave of prosperity started in Alberta.  For the first time in decades, Saskatchewan experiences positive population growth.

…and then came Stephane Dion.

In recent days, I have set before the American people an energy plan. … And let it begin today with this commitment: In a world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025.

McCain is just covering up economic reality and using it to create a positive spin. The supply of oil is an international two-way street and it is no longer possible for the U.S. government to steer the traffic. It is only thanks to the high oil prices that independence is commercially viable. Without high oil prices, there would be no talk of independence.

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Tar sands oil comes to market because it is offered at a marginally lower rate than the international prices. Therefore, avoiding Albertan oil means paying marginally more for oil of a different source — rarely a concern of politicians. Banning a supplier forces the consumer to burn extra energy in working to pay the extra taxes to fund the extra cost of the “clean” fuel.

His comments are highly informative to the debate actually.  Some commenters of like mind express their disdain for reproductive outcomes (though they clearly enjoy the process).  It was interesting to read a couple of commenters point out a drawback to pursuing permanent birth control may be an increased likelihood of decreased pleasure - both in the case of the removal of a uterus and in the tying of the vas.

It is common in North American culture to see only the net expense of children, but it shouldn’t be surprising.  Considering only the immediate ramifications of anything is a major downfall of our collective thinking, and is certain to bring about the downfall of our civilization.  Most of the best arguments against the childlessness position are based upon the long term consequences of such decisions.  I will concede that Captain Capitalism’s numbers on the TCO of children are legitimate.  However, there are major rational arguments for childbearing, despite the cost.

Demographics

Steyn makes the point: since we’ve turned to immigration to keep our populations trending upward, we are dealing with higher and higher assimilation costs as the places in the world that have excess populations are more and more foreign to the western style of life.  We are also facing the consequences of cultures and religions that in some cases actively work against the organization of our western free state.  If we don’t have kids, in a few decades our countries will be transformed into states much like where the immigrants are coming from.  It’s not fearmongering - it is just a statement of fact.  We are spending so much time telling people to not change that sooner or later, we will be the ones to change.

A nation is made up of citizens.  If the citizens all (or mostly) opt individually not to reproduce, they sentence themselves to planned obsolescence in 50 or so years.

Services

We live in a socialist state.  We have very expensive social programs that are designed to give everyone the benefits of familial support even if we don’t have any.  Because people don’t need families to help them health-wise, retirement-wise, we aren’t having kids.  We are trusting in government to be there to prop us up and nurse us as we sicken, and we trust government to give us what we need to live out our lives after we cease to be as productive.  Yes, I know most people don’t expect government to literally have the money in the retirement plans once we get old (though if they keep up the immigration and those immigrants don’t change the face and aims of our government there still might be CPP in 40 years), but I have news for even those people: even with a fat RRSP portfolio, you are still trusting in your government to be your sustainer.  The government manages your currency - that which gives value to your RRSP’s.  The government manages your economy - that engine that sustains the value of your RRSP’s.  The government manages the peacefulness of your society - that which keeps you alive and unaccosted by those who would take advantage of you.  If the government fails on any of those fronts (as governments are wont to do), then you have nothing.  All you can hope for is that you can somehow maintain a prescience about impending societal change, and can get out before you lose out.

How likely is the government to let you down?  Well, let’s see.  How many nations in the world have been in existence for more than 50 years?  Now, subtract all those which have faced wars on home soil in the last 50 years.  Now, subtract all those who faced massive natural disasters on a national scale.  Now, subtract all those who have faced massive civil unrest in the last 50 years.  Now subtract all those who have faced massive economic upheaval in the last 50 years.  How many are left?  What are the odds of your country bucking the trend for another 50?  What I am saying is that in the event of any of the above, your investments in paper and banks will avail you next to nothing.  Only human capital will be of any worth in any of those situations.

Genetics

From a strict genetic standpoint, not having kids is stupid.  The lowest rates of reproduction are found in the highest earning, highest educated, highest standard of living brackets.  Therefore the smartest, wealthiest people in society - the ones who contribute most to the society - will not be replaced.  Their children, should they have them, have the greatest statistical chance of success and adding to the value of society.  But they are not.

Increasingly, it is the ones who are least disciplined, the ones who make the most rash choices, or the ones who simply don’t get it are the ones who are reproducing.  Promiscuous sex, young, unwed mothers, young men with no sense of responsibility, dropouts, seem to be the childbearers of today more and more.  I am generalizing - obviously I have a bunch of kids, and I don’t fall into any of the previous, but the percentage of people having kids that do fall into those groups continues to climb societally.  It is a problem that gets worse with each generation - if your mother was an unwed teenager, the odds are much greater that you will be an unwed teenage parent.  Where does that take us societally?  See the Services section above - it will either bankrupt the system or send the country into chaos sooner or later.

Loneliness

Number one on my hit list is still emotional.  It was something my grandfather found out when he moved into a mature living community.  Those gated communities that don’t allow anyone under 65 to live there?  Those ones.  After he moved in, we were over for dinner one night and he told me that despite all the programs and activities organized by senior’s groups and even the residence, the most consistent indicator of happiness in advanced years was kids.  Those with none were sad.  Those with were not.  Those with none had nobody in their lives.  They had fewer visitors.  They had nobody to give to.  They had nobody to receive from.  As society is increasingly mobile, people live farther and farther from siblings - and when you get old they all start dying anyway.  Friends are not as consistent because they move closer to their families and away from you.  In the end, you are alone.  And they uniformly wish they had kids when they were younger.

There are exceptions to the rule, but it is ludicrous to base your future on being the exception.  That’s like taking the financial argument and saying, “well, I don’t need kids because I will win the lottery and I won’t need financial support.”  Yes, you might live out the perfect storm of friendships and retain some into your advanced years.  But the vaast majority won’t.  At the same time, a person with kids may screw them up so bad that they all hate his guts and never want to see him or her again when they are old.  But they most likely won’t.  It takes a lot to alienate family.  A lot.

Ultimately, the way I see it, there’s a lot of things I can’t control.  But one thing I can control is how I raise and treat my kids.  If I love them, they will love me.  Then, no matter what comes, whether new taxes, no taxes, revolution, recession, I’ll have them to count on.  When I focus on giving emotionally to someone else, then I ensure I will have more in the future.  There are only two reasons not to have kids: 1) believing you will fail to raise them properly (and I don’t fault you for thinking that if you come from a rough background, but I would encourage you to believe in yourself - love is really easy to learn); and 2) believing that you will have to give up something for your kids.  It is true - you will.  But if your reason for not having kids is self-interest alone, well, that’s just sad.  A penny clung to does not give you more money.  Emotions wrapped up in yourself never make you happier.  Only investing in others, giving of yourself -  reliably leads to true happiness.  And that’s what kids are really all about.

McCain said such a device should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs and have “the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”

If the battery actually works, the savings in gasoline should be enough incentive to the customer. This proposed $300 million prize is just a subsidy from the poor, i.e., people who can not afford the car, transferred to the rich, i.e., people who can afford the car plus benefit from the gasoline savings.

The cynic in me tells me that this magical electric battery has already been invented.

The economy will likely avoid a formal recession, but its outlook through the end of next year is decidedly “subprime” with the deep housing downturn restraining growth to just above 1 percent, a UCLA Anderson Forecast report released on Wednesday said.

A “witch’s brew of the popping of the housing bubble, a wounded financial system and increasing inflationary pressures coming from rising commodity prices will keep the economy on a subprime growth path for the next several quarters,” according to the forecasting unit’s report.

What he said amounts to a doctor saying “Son, we figured it out! Your headaches are caused by pain above your shoulders.” This type of superficial economic analysis is passed off all of the time and most people do not even notice. It keeps the ball rolling and diverts attention away from the source.

The truth is that this “subprime” mess is all caused by The Fed printing lots of money backed by absolutely nothing. The Fed printed money to “stimulate” the economy and to finance expenses (for instance, a war) for which raising taxes would be a politically difficult sell.

Despite what the socialists would have you believe, you can not make something out of nothing. However, you can certainly confuse people about the real value of assets in the short run thus provoking poor business decisions on a larger scale. So, instead of financing public expenses by taxing Americans in an accounting sense, Americans are being taxed by price inflation, rising unemployment, credit crunches and decreasing economic growth. What a fantastic mix.

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However, I don’t doubt that in a city of 4 million people, there may be thousands of people who are willing to pay for that.

The question is, are the people who will buy tickets to an NFL team in Toronto the same people who will buy tickets for a CFL game in Toronto?

The National Post is doing a series on the question of an NFL team in Toronto.  Politicians are weighing in on it as those against the move are looking to find support from politicians to protect “Canadian heritage”, or to protect Canada from a “monopoly”.  I was sent Bob Ackles’ article in the series (it was dated today, but I didn’t see it online so I won’t reprint it) and he is obviously against the move in the interests of preserving his interest in the BC Lions.  He along with many others, believe that if the NFL comes to Toronto it will lead to the death of the CFL.

I think the question I posed at the top is the real one: are the two markets the same?

From a fans standpoint, I don’t think so.  I think given ticket prices that were similar, a good number of people may choose to go to an NFL game, simply from the marketing and hype of the NFL.  However, the prices are not similar.  Toronto Argonauts sell their tickets at between $20 and $80 for single games.  The Seattle Seahawks sell theirs for between $37 and $360.  There is a different clientele that can afford NFL tickets it seems to me.

From a sponsorship standpoint, there may be problems.  Canada’s corporate community isn’t all that big to begin with, since free trade opened up all kinds of big American corporations much freer access to our marketplaces.  The few big ones there are want maximum exposure - and will go anywhere to get it.  Witness the Royal Bank of Canada buying naming rights to the Carolina Hurricanes’ hockey rink!  Why spend a little on CFL sponsorship and get a little exposure when you can buy NFL sponsorship and get exposure in both America and Canada?  I can see where this could cause problems, but is being protectionist the solution?  I don’t know.

What I wonder is whether or not we can look to other sports to test feasibility.  The NHL is the big dog in most of Canada.  All the big corporate sponsors go NHL if they want exposure to hockey fans.  Yet, in recent years we have seen successful Canadian Junior Hockey franchises begin to crop up in NHL markets: The Calgary Hitmen and the Vancouver Giants are the two closest to home for me.  Both of them seem to be thriving, with lower ticket prices making the games more approachable for families and the less wealthy (while NHL ticket prices skyrocket, putting them out of reach of average Joes).  They don’t seem to be lacking in corporate sponsorship and they seem to make all kinds of money.

We shouldn’t kid ourselves: the CFL is a minor league.  There has not been a time in the last 30 years where CFL and NFL teams could even compare with one another skillwise.  Yes, they play different games, but it’s still football, and the best players in the CFL all grew up playing college football at American four-down schools.  The CFL will always be a minor league - Canadians are not willing to pay NFL money to attract NFL talent, and CFL owners do not have the deep pockets required to begin to simply hire players away from the NFL.  So if the question becomes, will the big league kill the minor league?  The answer, as witnessed by AHL, CHL and NHL hockey teams coexisting in many cities, seems to likely no.  It doesn’t have to, but we need to look carefully at how teams like the Giants and the Hitmen successfully markets and positions their clubs for profitability in the face of the big league in town.

First of all, I do not see sending radiographs to India for an interpretation as a bad thing — particularly when it saves costs. Second, Quebec doctors can do that too. Before selling a final interpretation to a Quebecker, a Quebec doctor can review and certify it no matter who (an Indian technician, for instance) saw it beforehand. Third, maybe Quebec customers want cheap radiographic interpretations from India. Fourth, maybe Quebec customers want cheap radiographs to interpret themselves! They should have those choices.

This Bill 95 entered into the Quebec National Assembly is nothing more than protectionism stifling consumer choice.

The Competition Bureau devotes considerable resources to investigating allegations that competitors have engaged in price-fixing, also referred to as cartel activity.

Cartels are not stable. For any hypothetical cartel, each member can always profit by cheating, under-cutting and breaking the cartel. It makes no sense to think they can be a real threat to the consumer for any considerable length of time. Furthermore, there is nothing morally wrong with one retailer calling to find out the price of a competitor particularly when the goal is to under-cut his price. Just placing a telephone call is not proof that collusion occurred to raise prices. I have not found transcripts anywhere on the Bureau’s website or elsewhere on the internet. If somebody can direct me, I would be much obliged.

Blaming rising prices on cartels is too easy and getting governments to intervene can be foolhardy. In fact, government threats and interventions may contribute to anti-competitive behavior in the market and make things worse for the consumer. The Bureau offers immunity to retailers who participate in the investigations — that can actually subvert competition in the market by pitting one retailer against an other. To illustrate, an evil-retailer can instigate the formation of a cartel and rope his unsuspecting competitors into a trap. Once the cartel is rolling, the evil-retailer gets immunity after informing the bureau of a cartel in his local market.

So, at the end of the day, if one of these alleged cartel gas stations in Quebec goes out of business as a result of these penalties, I doubt the consumer will be better off — but his competitors will certainly be happy. Will the taxes spent in this investigation be a worthwhile investment? I doubt it.

Of course, you’d think that the powerful cannabis lobby would start fighting against this carbon tax, now that cold weather has started damaging the weed.  But then again the same eco-freaks that are fighting so hard to stave off any sort of economic or industrial growth in the province are - and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this - uniformly pot-smokers.  Will they be as ecologically interested when they can’t get stoned anymore?

I am all for low prices — when I buy stuff. Low prices are great but not for the retailer — not for the Canadian retailer who has to pay Canadian taxes and endure the Canadian climate.

If current levels of energy prices persist, total CPI inflation will rise above 3 per cent later this year.

The bank conveniently focuses on “core” inflation which excludes the price of oil in its basket.

Holding the lending rate this morning was a surprise for some and a reversal from the previous six-month trend of interest rate cuts. Only a few months ago, the governor of the Bank announced an expansion of the money supply will be a strategy to stimulate the economy:

Further monetary stimulus is likely to be required in the near term to keep aggregate supply and demand in balance and to achieve the two per cent inflation target over the medium term.

As would be expected, people earning $80,000 a year or more are cutting back the least (37 per cent) on daily driving and taking fewest steps (36 per cent) to increase gas mileage in cars.

Conversely, more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of drivers earning less than $20,000 a year said they’re cutting back on daily driving, while 64 per cent were trying to increase gas mileage in their cars.

Meanwhile, two-fifths of drivers in the lower middle income range of $20,000 to $40,000 said they’re more frequently turning to other means of travel than their car - the highest among various income groups.

When they start trying to tell you that high gas prices don’t hurt the poor, remember these statistics.  When they start saying that only the rich will be hurt because they drive hummers, remember this.

Any action by any party to raise gas prices hurts the poor.  Do not let them tell you any different.

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Get real people. The previous $500 per game contract was a colossal rip-off and never should have happened. The artist is just trying to milk the tax-payer further. With this contest, the CBC is telling how much they are willing to pay the artist of the current theme. No more and no less. Have no fear. I like to call this whole thing a game of poker or chicken. My guess is that we will get the old theme back. My bet is that the CBC is this artist’s biggest source of income.

I recommend that the owners of the current Hockey Night In Canada theme submit their old theme to this contest and take the prize money. Since the winner will be chosen by the listeners, I figure it would be a shoe-in. Anything the CBC offers is a cash cow.

Citing Flaherty’s remark in February that companies would not want to invest in Ontario because of provincial business taxes, Dion demanded Prime Minister Stephen Harper put someone else in that portfolio.

I had to read down through 2/3 of the article to find that offhand reference as to the basis for firing the Minister of Finance.

Clearly he’s driven the country’s economy into the toilet, daring to speak the truth about high business taxes in Ontario.

Meanwhile, the man who so clearly deserves to be fired is busy pointing out a massive $250 million dollar fund available to encourage GM to redevelop the assembly plant to produce vehicles other than the increasingly shunned large SUV’s that they produced before.

I don’t even get why this is even a Federal issue.  Isn’t it more of a Provincial responsibility?  I don’t recall anyone going to bat federally when all the Skeena Cellulose mills on the Central Coast of BC were going belly up.  I don’t seem to remember any federal leader standing up for other shutdowns of lumber mills, and then shipping the raw timber south of the border for processing.

But somehow Ontario is special.  Ontario deserves to have industries propped up for employment with federal subsidies.

Talk about pandering for votes: Dion for demanding heads to roll on account of economic conditions beyond the control of any level of Canadian government, and Flaherty for scrambling to prop up said car factory, when he doesn’t have anything to say about manufacturing in other provinces.

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The news follows an agreement reached in mid-May with the Canadian Auto Workers.

CAW President Buzz Hargrove said GM is now breaking that agreement.

Speaking at a news conference, Hargrove said GM had committed to ongoing production of pickups in Oshawa through the life of the new collective agreement.

“No intelligent human being would ever agree there’s been such a change in two weeks that somehow General Motors would have to back away from a commitment,” Hargrove said, vowing the CAW would fight the closure.

Well, gee, Buzz, those auto workers hired YOU to negotiate on their behalf. So, who is the intelligent human being?

Anyway, I have a recommendation for Buzz: go on a strike!

By the way, I would rather see politicians do a little bit less selling out to gain political power, thank you very much.

“Today I called for an additional one cent per litre of the gas tax to be dedicated to public transit each and every year,” said Mr. Layton.
“That would give over a half a billion dollars guaranteed every year for public transit systems across the country.”

Such statements are nonsense without considering the effects of substitution. That one cent per liter dedicated to public transit is one cent per liter taken away from some other budgeted expense.

Furthermore, it is foolish to speak of a specific amount of money guaranteed every year for anything. Hey, Jack! Did you know that people are not driving the same cars as they were driving in the past? Did you know that technologies in fuel efficiency are growing? That may affect your “one cent per litre” total accumulation — negatively.

As oil barrel prices have hit record numbers every day in the last week or two, I was hit with a bad case of deja vu.

I’ve traced it to the real estate market, the dot-com market, and just about every other “bubble” that has been mentioned in the last 10 years.

As much as I have tried to believe that it really is accelerating demand in emerging markets like China and India, it just didn’t seem right.

Evidently I am not the only one anymore.

Oil price ‘a bubble waiting to burst’
‘Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation’

A fundamental component of the debate has been ignored so far though and that is whether a tax on the sixth element of the periodic table is really such a good idea after all. For example, I relayed a report late last year on how an obsessive academic from Australia proposed the sick ideal of putting a carbon tax on each baby born into the world and a yearly tax on children for the first years of their lives. As we have our national government apologizing for the Chinese head tax of almost 100 years ago, calling the practice a shameful blemish from our past, eco-liberals are gearing up to add a tax that doesn’t discriminate on race necessarily but on simply existing. The professor was never quite clear on what would happen if families either refused or could not afford to pay the tax, although he was certainly joyous in announcing how this would effectively womens’ (and mens’) right to chose to have their babies (something liberals often love to do except when they know the choice will result in one less life in the world).

On the other end of the age spectrum though, Stephane Dion’s carbon tax threatens the well-being of our society. While details haven’t been offered by many pundits so far, I’m sure more than a few of them have been sharing my imagination of a Conservative attack ad picturing an elderly old lady, huddled in the corner of a dark, snow-squalling room; as the picture pans out from the detailed sadness of this lonely old woman, a caption will read something to the effect that the retired lady wouldn’t afford heat because that nasty Scrooge of a Liberal, Stephane Dion, is taxing coal so high that she can’t afford to keep warm this Christmas/winter. Whether or not we end up seeing an ad like this run, the fact still remains that some fixed-income Canadians will be hit hard by a carbon tax, often in the case where they slaved away their whole lives under an income tax system that punished them when they were making more money. Now they wouldn’t make as much, which should reduce their burden under income tax, but would be sideswiped by the Dion carbon tax at a time in their lives where going out to make more money simply wouldn’t be an option.

Finally, we have to realize just what a ridiculous notion it is for the Liberals to propose that a carbon tax would be tax neutral. Take the mathematical equation ax + by + cz = 100, where a, b, and c are the percentages of total tax that three hypothetical taxpayers, x, y, and z, would pay into the system. If a tax shift were truly neutral (and Canadians have good reason to believe that no political party that proposes a new tax will EVER deliver on the neutrality promise), that 100 would have to stay the same since it represents 100% of the taxes the government collects now.

On the one hand, it may go down for x because he doesn’t buy as much carbon in a year, but z’s burden might go up because she lives on a rural farm where oil heating and a truck are the necessities of a farmer, not the luxury that we might think. Will *big oil* account for some of the z’s out there who will see their tax bill increase? Most definately, but who do you think will pay for it in the end? The fat cat execs who The Left is always telling us about, or the common Canadian who goes to fill up at the pump?

On the other hand, we have to ask just why the Liberal spin doctors are already playing up the tax neutral element of such a carbon tax? After all, either the government isn’t going to be collecting the same amount of money because carbon usage will go down (in which case, we have to ask how Dion plans to fund his national daycare and other new spending projects), or they will and we will be essentially using the same amount of carbon. Thinking further, what isn’t carbon out there? Bread? Wrong. Clothes? Try again. Wood? Look elsewhere. In fact, the only things I can think of off the top of my head are computer chips and software programmes that are downloaded off the internet. Not exactly the bare necessities but I’m sure the tech industry is already thrilled that our government already presumes that we’re pirates and thieves every time we buy a CD/DVD and is itching to get into the flash drive market as well (think of it as a silicon tax — maybe we should just harmonize it with Dion’s carbon tax and have a tax on all IV A elements!).

Ultimately though, if the Liberals are willing to fight for this one in an election, I say go for it. After all, it wouldn’t take long for someone to point out the obvious: if all this environmental posturing we’re doing now is meant to save the Earth and, ultimately, our existence as a species, why would we impose a tax that would be so destructive both to our children and our elderly? Isn’t the point about making our quality of life better? And once the debate is framed that way, Dion’s already ill-advised plan will be toast and we won’t have to hear any more about eco-radicalism, or at least until the summer of 2024 when we have a couple more days over 30 than usual!

“We need a fiscal regime that will discourage pollution rather than reward it. Perhaps the time has come for Canadians to pay less tax on good things like work, savings, and investment. And perhaps the time has also come to put a price on waste and pollution,” he said.

He mentions some peak-oil nonsense but maybe, just maybe, the federal Liberals will advocate a genuine paradigm shift of reducing the current tax burden and changing how governments collect revenues.

Get to work, Dion. Get your message out there. So far this is what they are saying about you:

Stéphane Dion n’a pas encore fourni les détails de sa proposition ni expliqué la façon dont il compte s’y prendre pour taxer le carbone.
Or, les conservateurs profitent de ce vide pour présenter son projet comme une taxe dont le seul effet sera de faire grimper le prix du litre d’essence à 2,25 $.

How can the Liberals be surprised if the Tories just spin it as a tax grab? That is what Liberals do!
I hope Dion is sincere about this but really, it is a simple idea. I do not understand the hesitation.

Hey! I will give the Liberals a head start by giving them free advice. Use this policy:
1) reduce income taxes and employer deductions
2) raise taxes on oil
Simple enough. If they want to make it politically palatable they could propose to do it gradually. For example, reduce or increase each one by 1% each year for 3 years. Understandably, nobody can predict the over-all net gain (or loss) to the government coffers and just tell that to the electorate. Just say that after 3 years, the situation will be re-evaluated. Maybe 3 years down the road taxes on oil will have to be raised by 2% to support a continued 1% income tax reduction. I would expect a lot of the electorate would vote Liberal if they actually proposed something like that — I would still not vote Liberal but that does not matter.

The New Democratic Party has released documents it obtained through a Freedom of Information request to Pupatello’s economic development and trade ministry.
The documents suggest GM has so far been given about half of the $500 million that was to create at least 900 jobs.
The documents obtained by the NDP say Ford was to retain 4,000 jobs and Chrysler 5,200.
Both have cut hundreds of jobs.

I do not know about you guys but corporate welfare makes me sick. It eliminates any moral divide between the politics of socialists and non-socialists. None of this auto-sector welfare is really to my advantage either. I drive a cheap old foreign soapbox and the next car I buy will probably be the same!
Now, unlike the NDP, I say to hell with the Canadian Auto Workers and let the auto industry sink or swim on its own merits. It is clearly sinking.

Here is a suggestion: take all of the $500 million dollars and just send the auto workers a welfare cheque. Let them find a different job. Oh, but wait — that is not what the Canadian Auto Workers want. They want their same high paid jobs at the expense of the tax-payer. Last month, we got a taste of that laziness:

However, both Liberals and Conservative federal governments have ignored calls from the CAW - Canada’s largest private-sector union - for trade barriers on imports from Asian countries unless they open their markets
“I want to challenge our Canadian government to get up off their asses and start to give some attention to our declining auto industry, give attention to our declining manufacturing centre throughout this country,” Buckley said Tuesday.
“Our government continues to turn their backs on auto workers in this country, continues to turn their backs on people who rely on good paying manufacturing jobs.”

Those may certainly be “good paying” jobs no doubt but, sorry, they are not “good” jobs if they rely on trade barriers and denying consumer choice.

What is this nonsense?

McGuinty says it’s no secret the province is in talks with Italy’s Fiat, and is also in discussions with car makers in China, India and Germany about investing in Ontario.

Well, either Ontario is attractive to foreign manufacturers or it is not. What can McGuinty bring to the table of a business plan that no other person from Italy, China, India or Germany have? Oh, yeah, taxation! I guess the Ontario tax-payers will have to stay tuned for the rest of the story.

This has some of us singing The Blues too.

ADDENDUM:
More bureaucracy?

Taxpayers need an independent, non-partisan assessment of whether they’re getting good value for money from the $500-million OAIS program and similar subsidy programs aimed at other industries, totalling $1 billion more.
The best person to carry that out is provincial Auditor General Jim McCarter, either at McGuinty’s request, or on his own initiative.

No, tax-payers do not “need” anything, thank you very much.
I have a better suggestion: just let the consumers decide. I mean, what could be a better indicator of which companies “deserve” a subsidy than the companies that get the most customers? at which point a subsidy would not be needed. Wow! That almost sounds like magic! Funny how markets work, eh?

Now that money is involved, Michael Ignatieff gets in a tiffy:

“Australia is giving $25 million, the British $10 million, why aren’t we giving more when we can clearly do so,” Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff asked.

Clearly do so? We could clearly flush all of our money down the toilet too but we clearly do NOT do so. Ever think why?
I think he must be dreadfully stupid (or possibly disingenuous) to trust that the money will get to the people who need it most given the recent track record of the Myanmar statesmen — or maybe Ignatieff is completely clueless about how such despotic statesmen operate.

The Chinese are the major commercial supporters of the Myanmar military dictatorship. Let the Chinese government officials pay for everything: help people in Burma, help people in China and help re-build all of that infrastructure.

Now, I am not going to pretend that the gasoline industry is a free market but I reject the idea that consumers need more government bureaucracy to fill up their tanks. Layton calls it “fraudulent” if the gas pump does not expel the precise amount of gasoline. It might just be unavoidable mechanical imprecision. All tools or pieces of hardware contain imprecision. If this really was a problem in any financial sense, well, Mr. Layton, you have just opened up a business opportunity — read: no government intervention necessary. Anybody with an entrepreneurial spirit will look at this newspaper report and ask: “Which pumps are shortchanging the consumers?” That sounds like valuable information, I would think. It would certainly be valuable to their competitors.

If this “investigation” was worth its salt, the investigators would reveal which pumps were precise and which “one in 20 pumps shortchanges the consumer - errors that have cost Canadians millions of dollars.” A non-governmental standards board would be waiting at the doorstep. Until names of pumps are revealed, all of this is nonsense.

But now Canadian media, because we have a Conservative minority and the Liberals desperately want an election, rather than framing themselves as hypocrites, disagreeing with every government motion then abstaining to vote, the media are digging up every conceivable scrap of dirt to slander the Conservatives.

Look at the Bernier fiasco.  We have Gilles Duceppe looking like a pawn, and what are the real charges?  That a cabinet minister had the bad taste to date someone who had formerly gone out with a rough character.  Note he isn’t married to her, he dated her.   And she didn’t marry the rough character, she just went out with him for a while.  It seems to me that if I found out that my girlfriend used to go out with a Hell’s Angel, I would probably question her taste.  It might even lead to my ending the relationship.  Does this mean that I have necessarily done business, or have any sort of allegiance to said ex of my ex?  This is why the media refused to air the story for so long - it is a non-story.

But I digress.  What really set me off this morning is a bit of ludicrousness from Saskatoon.  Yes, that Saskatoon, that is growing faster than any other city in the country right now.  That Saskatoon that since unseating the NDP has seen the province’s first net growth from other provinces in decades.  That Saskatoon that is reaping record profits from mining, ethanol farming, and now a massive oil discovery in the southern part of the province.

But let’s look at the story itself.  A POLL of… who?  Oh right, citizens of Canada.  On what they KNOW or what they THINK?  What they think, right.  They THINK that we’re heading for a recession.  Why?  Probably because the media is telling them over and over again we MIGHT be heading for a recession, since the USA MAY be going into a recession, despite the fact that they haven’t come within a country mile of of the classic definition of a recession from professional economists.  What proof do they have?  Well, Ontario has faced a lot of closures and slowsdowns in the auto sector… but strangely, their unemployment rate is not growing significantly.  Alberta isn’t as white-hot as they were a year ago, so now they are only red-hot.  Out here in BC, there have been massive problems for the lumber industry, yet the heart of lumbering in Prince George has seen housing prices double in the last 2 or 3 years.  The Okanagan continues to boom because that’s where Albertans are buying vacation property.  And the Lower Mainland?  Well, people haven’t stopped moving in and jobs are still plentiful if a little underpaid given the cost of living.

So which provinces are exactly suffering and dragging us into recession?  Beats me.

But the authority the paper cites is the people.  The people who don’t have economics degrees, the people who don’t have their finger on the pulse of other provinces, or even their own cities generally.  No, all they know is the media keeps digging out “people” who speculate we MAY be going into a recession.

But like the gossip wheel, when one person whispers into your ear, when you pass it on, it gets worse each time.

The media whispers, “we may be going into a recession.”

Then the polling company calls and asks, “Do you fear a recession?”

The citizens say “Yes” because they have heard we may be going into a recession.

The media reports, “Economy recession-bound, latest poll indicates”

So now we are going into a recession.

I can’t wait for these clowns to go out of business, if this is what passes for journalism nowadays.

This sounds awful:

23. (1) Subject to subsection 23.1(1), an inspector may, for the purpose of verifying compliance or preventing non-compliance with this Act or the regulations, at any reasonable time enter a place, including a conveyance, in which the inspector believes on reasonable grounds that an activity that is governed by this Act or the regulations is conducted or a document relating to the administration of this Act is located.

If you read the rest of the bill, it can be summarized as follows “The Inspector can do whatever he wants at your expense and can coerce you (or anybody else who happens to get in between) to help the inspection.” I find this quite ugly and this is only part of the whole bill.

“May I have some more garlic sauce on my shawarma, please?”
“Nope. Sorry. Not allowed anymore.‘

ADDENDUM (Thursday, May 29th, 2008):
I just noticed this: I Withdraw My Support From the CPC
Kudos to Mike Brock for taking a strong stand.

Every barrel of oil steamed out of the sand in Ft. McMurray is one more barrel that doesn’t come from a misogynist, human rights-violating environmental basket case, usually a dictatorship, and often a sponsor of terrorism. The moral thing to do would be to pump as much oil as technologically possible from Ft. McMurray.

He is right, but missing one crucial problem.

People don’t care about human rights in 3rd world countries anymore.

They’ve given up caring.  It appears that to the informed west, it is futile to complain about women and homosexuals being stoned in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia, so they will just keep on supporting buying oil there.  It is futile to complain about the lawlessness of Nigeria because of oil money, because it won’t change.  And so on and so on.

But for Alberta to commit the grievous sin of accidentally hurting some ducks (not endangered ducks, not ducks at-risk, but just ordinary ducks that litter the face of the earth), and then apologizing (because words can never bring back those darling ducks!) the Albertan oil industry, and by extension all Albertans, must be pilloried and shunned (or all oil imported from Alberta must be marked “Not-Green” or “Duck-Killing”).

It’s about what will actually have an effect.  I think this is also why the human rights councils at the UN spend so much time condemning the USA, Canada and Australia for their treatment of aboriginal peoples, while disgusting crimes against women are carried out routinely in places like East Africa with female circumcision and polygamy.  There are countless other much more routine and awful human rights violations in the Middle East against homosexuals and women, not to mention religious minorities like the Buddhists and Christians.  Yet for some reason, nearly every year some resolution gets passed condemning Canada for meanness to natives, who have their own land, are largely self-governing, get massive cash stipends every month, lavishly funded job training, university scholarships at their disposal should they be so inclined, just for their genetic background.

But it’s done because they know we actually care what the international community thinks and we will actually do something about it.

And it keeps us too wrapped up in ourselves, straining to pull the “log out of our own eye” that we never get around to helping out other with their specks.

In California the Salvation Army was forced to close down several inner city missions because officials refused to sign a document approving of homosexuality. The destitute suffered terribly as a consequence. In Britain the Roman Catholic church similarly was obliged to shut the doors of its adoption agency.

Aside from also speaking about our government-imposed unhealthy relationship between employees and employers, Coren got me thinking by phrasing the incident that sparked this whole thing in the way he did:

One employee announced to colleagues that she was a lesbian and began discussing her sexuality. Eventually she was let go. She complained to the Human Rights Commission, which fined Christian Horizons and demanded the change. Demanded, in fact, that they not be Christian.

I hadn’t considered it until reading Coren’s column, but what if we flipped this around and an employee started sharing their Christian faith with colleagues? I doubt it would end up before a HRC. And even if we buy into the secularist axiom that homosexuals are born wired to be homophilic (one that, like all such axioms on fetal tissue, the origins of life and the universe, and climate change conveniently lacks that indisputable proof that axioms usually come with), can the state successfully argue that a believing Christian isn’t just as equally inseparable from their faith and what it makes him or her? Think of the parallels: some people in churches leave to join other religions, and some homosexuals realize they just aren’t homosexuals any longer; both groups claim that their respective affiliations colour everything they do; and both groups have their affiliations protected under the current legal community’s consensus.

It’s an interesting situation: one where a group tasked with going out into all the world to spread their Good News has their constitutionally recognized right to do so repressed, while another had beneficial rights literally penciled into the highest document of the land is allowed to ignore the acronym every employee should know: NSFW (Not Safe For Work). It wasn’t the lesbian woman’s decision to become a lesbian that got her fired, it was her insistence on preaching the news to the rest of her co-workers that did. Curious that, when any Christian who pulled a similar stunt would be out by 3pm, box of belongings in hand. To use Coren’s wording, a sane nation would actually follow it’s own laws and both groups would be able to share away but that would also presume that groups like HRCs would be under the law too, now wouldn’t it?

Immigrants coming from other countries tend to make less money than people from Canada, which has one of the highest standards of living, worldwide. Not to mention that they have to go about finding a job in a new country, sometimes when they don’t even know one of the languages.

Also in the story, it mentions how companies are demanding people with higher levels of education, which is making the average wages of the middle class flatline. How dare employers seek people who have some kind of confirmation of their knowledge? I’m not saying that they’re neccassarily better employees, but I know I’d rather see some kind of affirmation when a young gun walks into my office, if I’m in charge of hiring for a company.

Mind blowing, isn’t it?

Secondary industry involves the processing of raw resources into more usable forms.  Examples of this are sawmills, smelters and refineries.  These industries take out a lot of the waste in the resource (slag, bark, etc.) and present a raw material that can then be used to create something useful.  This processing takes industrial and technological and human resource investment, but provides much more benefit in terms of profit to the community, and to the state.

Tertiary industry involves the actual production of goods.  It takes the cut lumber, the refined crude, the wood pulp, the steel, and turns it into goods - paper, houses, buildings, cars.  This involves even more technology and human resources.

Every job created in industry means more taxes collected for government, more income, more employment, more services needed.  It is an economic fact that every industrial job created spawns seven service industry jobs in the community.  Thus, truly industrialized nations are based upon the building of secondary and tertiary manufacturing.  They create more in terms of national growth than primary industry does.  Colonialism was based upon this reality.  Industrialized, technological nations with a surplus of population exploited colonies for primary industry, shipping the raw materials home where the processing and manufacturing was done.  It made Britain, Europe, and the USA extraordinarily wealthy.

It should be pointed out, however, that the USA was a former colony.  It was being exploited by this economic reality, UNTIL it simply refused to be exploited anymore.  Taking secondary and tertiary production upon to itself has made America the most powerful economy in the world.

Why isn’t Canada like the USA?  It is because we have never stopped being a colony.  As our ties slowly disintegrated with England, we became a colony of America.  Now we provide the raw materials to America’s economic engine, but the cost is that we are forever a colony, throwing away our treasured resources and allowing other nations to exploit them and turn them into goods the world needs.

This is why it outrages me when I see our governments wilfully sabotaging our economic strength.  When I first moved to BC, I read in the paper about the new BC Liberals agreeing to INCREASE raw log exports (primary industry) to America and Asia, just as our lumber mills (secondary industry) were all shutting down due to lack of investment in technology and inefficiency.  We were throwing away jobs, sending them overseas and destroying towns that had prospered for a hundred years.  Why?  Because our government didn’t have the guts to stand up to big international conglomerates and tell them, if they want our logs, they need to process them here, before shipping them to market.

It really is that simple.   Canada has so much in the way of resources, and we are so close to markets like Asia and the USA that these big companies won’t find better places to get them.  It is too profitable to walk away from.  However, if we are willing to give away our resources, they will process them in the cheapest ways possible, which means we lose.

Flash forward to news today about a pipeline proposed to take oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast.  The main focus of the pipeline is to get oil to the “Gulf Coast Refinery Complex”.  I am sorry.  They built those refineries to get oil from offshore rigs and from the Texas Oilfields.  If those fields are tapped out, too bad.  They need to build more refineries in Alberta.  It’s our oil, we deserve to benefit from the secondary and tertiary processing that come from its production.

Yes, America would love to keep the refining and the jobs and the taxes where they are, but not at the expense of Canada.  That just ain’t right.

While the reasons for the union, essentially a private organization unaccountable to voters, to reject such a honey of deal remains unclear at this time, it might be time to eulogize this sort of hostage-victim relationship that the transit workers have enjoyed with the city over the last few decades since it’ll never be sweeter than this again. Combined with an illegal strike in 2006, today’s sudden cancellation of service will likely mark a turn in already sour public temperament after the aforementioned week of learning from the media just how much they had to empty the cupboard this time to appease the already well-compensated workers. As a general rule, you don’t come back to the kid you just stole lunch money again for another sucker punch indulgence. That’s exactly what the TTC has done here, prompting both Comrade Miller and a formerly reluctant Dalton McGuinty to reach a deal legislating back-to-work orders, on top of considering a further provision making the TTC essential service. If that last part is successful (and it should be since paying our taxes to public unions is also an essential service), the TTC will have lost most of the ridiculous bargaining powers it used to hold the 2 million-plus city at bay. The threats of literally shutting down the city will evaporate over night and Toronto might actually be able to keep new contract raises under the rate of inflation.

If, on the other hand, the TTC fights back and takes a page from the teachers unions’ during the Bill Davis years in the 1970s, we’ll enter into an ugly, painful, but necessary stage where the public’s outrage with an out of control union will flare up so quickly that we might actually begin to see private transportation grow to a significant level of business. Fleets of shuttle cars, taxis and other creative means of moving people would remove any necessity for the TTC, which would be relegated to a poor cousin dependent on government honey for survival, and much akin to the CBC today. We might see a Mike Harris-type Premier come along and ask why the TTC’s subway service just couldn’t be privatized like the 407 was nine years ago, since commuters already pay for the TTC as it is.

In short, the TTC is about to be de-clawed, and if it shows any teeth because of the procedure, it might find itself further surgically altered. The TTC’s literally putting all it’s stakes on the line today though. Enjoy the nice Saturday weather and smugness today though, for tomorrow you find out that you’ll get more than you bargained for!

UPDATE: Views from Joanne and Tony, with more to follow I’m sure!

The Bloc Québécois is poised to table potentially controversial legislation giving Quebec the power to opt out of the national Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and set up its own telecommunications regulator.

Hopefully the Bloc succeeds and leads the way to the eventual dissolution of the entire Commission.

The program will pay farmers $225 per breeding swine killed after Monday. The meat will go into dog food or be given to food banks. It can’t be sold in grocery stores because that might be considered a subsidy.

Might be considered a subsidy? This is a subsidy. The pork producers can restrict supply all they want. They do not need the government for that. This is a subsidy because the government is paying them to do it. Where the farmers dump their garbage at the end of their work-day is a red herring.

The tax-payer pays for this subsidy and then the tax-payer pays again with higher pork prices. Wonderful!

You know what else is wonderful? You get well-meaning people blaming the “free market” for this when it is not even a free market at all. Too bad. We all need boogey-men, I suppose.

———-

If I had $50 Million dollars and pork farmers came to me for “help” today — assuming I was so inclined, I would give them money to help them transition into a different industry. I would not help them continue to produce pork.

With that said though, I think that the Harper government, keen to keep itself from acting too rational on matters dealing with our southern neighbours, lest our nation’s favourite case of racism bloom along with the other spring offerings, might have come to the right conclusion on this one, even if they still don’t have a good reason for why they did it in the first place. Consider, if you will, the wider context of this sale. Yes this was a sale between two willing organizations that was perfectly legal within the context of business and contract law and in appearances it appeared very free-trade and amicable for all parties. However, the aerospace industry and its derivatives, including satellites, is notoriously regulated the western governments involved. For MDA, this means that it cannot compete for U.S. business because U.S. law requires that contracts are rewarded exclusively to U.S. firms. In fact, if you look at why MDA wanted this deal so badly, it’s precisely because of this law — it would’ve allowed the company to compete in the massively larger, and far more lucrative U.S. ocean instead of being concealed within its present Canadian fishbowl. Not that we’re much better, screaming how any foreign interaction would be an immediate compromise to our sovereignty and national security.

At the end of the day though, if we’re going to play nice and laissez-faire, the least we owe to ourselves is to expect the same attitudes in return. NAFTA would’ve never worked for Canada if it was all give and no take. It’s also why North America’s flirtation with China is ultimately doomed in the long run as well. As soon as they actually get an economy over there, do you think the Chinese government’ll actually welcome the free flow of wealth out of its country, given the way it handles every other non-expedient situation it encounters right now? This sort of vigilance might have also given our local auto industries a fighting chance, if the union python wasn’t helping Japanese protectionism to choke it to death!

So in retrospect, I think that even conservatives will look back on the Prentice decision as one that was beneficial for a Canadian firm. Not that the man actually deserves any credit, given his willingness to invent guilt-by-association taxes to appease record labels and other blunders that indicate that Jim Prentice clearly doesn’t *get* how economies work! Of course, lost in the translation during this whole situation was the question of how MDA got into its mess in the first place; if Prentice were wise, he’d be spending the upcoming weeks with his American counterpart on that one…

Sometimes we can be suckers for punishment to the point where we are blind to the bigger picture of corruption in public office or the civil service. I do not care whether Paul Champagne goes to jail or not. I just want my money back!

Even if we can not get all of the money back, I would say that realistically, firing him is probably sufficient punishment given that he is going bankrupt. Try applying for a job with “I swindled the tax-payer.” written on your forehead and unexplained blank time periods on your resume.

By the way, I think a few people in the Department of National Defense should be fired too.

“All Canadians were victims of these offences and all no doubt felt a sense of betrayal and loss because of them,” said Justice Ann Alder who sentenced him to seven years in jail. Sorry, not good enough. In fact, I think the judge’s statement is highly naive because not all Canadians were victims at all. [Maybe being naive is the best thing we can do? The justice system is part of the civil service too.] Some clearly benefited by being his clients. We should never forget the middlemen.

Hewlett-Packard reached an out-of-court settlement with Champagne before he was convicted of fraud. If you read the rest of the article, you find a lot of tax-payer’s money was spent by Champagne in many different extravagant ways. As it turns out, many assets “owned” by Champagne but paid by the tax-payer are now going to Hewlett-Packard! Great!

Unless you grow your own vegetables, raise your own livestock, chop your own wood, fetch your own water and weave your own wool, there will always be a middleman. I am not saying that all middleman are complicit and I do not want to cast aspersions on Hewlett-Packard. My hope is to point out that how we deal with corruption should be more profound than putting one guy on a chopping block. Bureaucracy can be a nasty network.