cannuck

With China, it was a choice to either trade with them and include them in the world's economy or shun them and create a possible military enemy. I applaud the choice of the former, but deride the ineptitude of diplomats and politicians who didn't bother to learn to understand the values of the country they were inviting UNRESTRICTED into our lives. The sad part is: we could have simply asked the Nationalists who fled to Formosa who would have gladly taught us how and why to be wary of the Communists. I was fortunate enough to have been in business with one of the latter who actually played a significant part in sourcing food internationally for Mao's regime. He told me about how ruthless business would become, and one fine day we woke up and our Chinese business, all of its assets and the REQUIRED Chinese nationals who had to control it on paper simply disappeared. A clearly criminal act over here, and no doubt SUPPOSEDLY so in China, but in law there, as with in fact everything they do and are - the interpretation and enforcement of law varies wildly with each passingd and context of each day. Ask the two Michaels about it...if we ever get the chance. As to Schellenberg: a good example of Chinese law. While I have no problem with anyone dealing drugs getting offed they DO deserve the right to be proven in a highly transparent way to actually BE involved.

I certainly don't want to cut us off from China, Iran or ESECIALLY KSA, as these are all places I do business in and have for decades. My business partners carry passports from those places. Doesn't mean I agree in any way with HOW we do trade relations with them (ESPECIALLY CHINA). You have to first understand that China has a very different culture and values from Canada and the West in general. To think you will do business with them as an equal in good faith - as we have come to expect from the USA and Europe - is a fallacy in the extreme. They expect to "win" in all deals - and will do anything that can expedite that end goal. I first experienced this in the '60s with Chinese students who would cheat endlessly on exams to get a high mark - as the pressure from the expectations of their parents who sent them (from Hong Kong then) was oppressive to say the least. The problem is: they would get what THEY though from their value set was important - the degree and the mark - but often did not learn the subject matter worth a damn. IMHO, the ONLY way a Chinese product should get into Canada is by demonstrating that it meets our standards for all of the things that we legislate that a Canadian producer must do to make a similar product. That means environmental, worker rewards, protection and rights, safety and quality. You can't close the door, but you have to control it (China does not reciprocate, it slams the door in your face). I agree very much with your statement of the unity we would require to do so. It has to start with a very open and pointed discussion about what trade with China really means, and either we have that discussion now while we are somewhere around the rim of the shitter or we wait until we are circling the drain that the pain and consequence is unavoidable. BTW: dealing with the issue of our speculative "economy" is of equal importance and difficulty. What we NEED is actual leadership, not some half-wit silver spoon who can do nothing more than spew mindless BS and perpetuate the problem - hell EXACERBATE them with total ineptitude. I don't blame the little twit, I blame Canadians. WE elected the idiots - and go to WalMart to perpetuate our economic decline.

First of all, GOOD article from MacLean's - not somewhere I would expect. 1) Must apologize for the cryptic response, had to move equipment early this morning, so was rushing through things. By this, I mean the direction our economy is taking. B the end of WWII, we had hoisted ourselves by the bootstraps from being a "hewer of wood and drawer of water" to an integrated economy that could and DID add value to our resources domestically to meet our own needs and sell into the export market. Yes, a significant part of that was dominated by US products coming in, but that also included a significant proportion of value added processing that was unfortunately "branch plant" of US entities. An example: the auto trade at the start of NAFTA period was 70% of Ontario's entire business economy and that was 90% of Canada's value added capacity - so 60-odd% of our value added processing was with the US - but in a trade relationship where we actually did more v/a export than import with them. As I must repeat ad infinitum, you can only create wealth by adding value to a resource or delivering an essential service in support of that function. Our economy has been sliding down the shitter in value added processing for decades, and that has been displaced by goods from China. What is WRONG with those goods is that they not only displace a current Canadian value added function, but they tend to be absolute garbage that will be replaced over, and over, and over vs. the lifetime of a quality product that we once might have made. Waste makes economists happy as they can measure an increase in economic activity, but it makes me very unhappy as it is nothing more than that: waste. 2) trade is much more than consumerism. It is - or SHOULD be - about who benefits from what, and at what cost to the trading partner. Trade for Canada is sliding from a place where we had the jobs, skills and infrastructure to produce high value added products to a position where we are mindless consumers of piss poor quality shit, and we eat that shit by paying for it with our FINITE supply of natural resources. What we have exported to China is not just our wheat, barely, canola, coal and other minerals, but our work ethic, skills, infrastructure and expertise. That may make an economist grin with delight as he/she can measure a bunch of economic activity, but it just pisses me off as a Canadian at how incredibly naive and ignorant we can be (and thus 3). 4) Yes this is a political forum, but debt comes from far more places than just government. BUT: it has to be serviced from one single economy, and tht economy is no longer very productive, it is largely speculative (that is inflationary). A good example: Chinese (and other ) immigration has pushed real estate prices in major centers to dizzying heights. The only productive part of real estate is building something that is required. Merely inflating its value, once again puts a smile on an economist's face because you have some growing numbers. It shouldn't make anyone happy since that is money merely re-distributed and inflated within our economy, reducing the capital available for productive work by transferring that money into the hands of those who produce nothing - but misery. Did I forget to mention that chairs in economics are mostly supported by banks??? It is not a discipline that deserves our respect.

It is not only "worth" it, but required to restore our "direction" within the continuum. We are sliding into useless tit hell from our dependence on consumerism and cheap shit from China. It is just that the borrowing power of governments can mask the decline from Joe Lunchbucket - who seems to be exactly as his white collar compatriots totally ignorant of just how much debt we have racked up both publicly and privately - and what could ultimately cost in the end.

But, we CAN change things. That is the very nature of human nature. We can implement rules and enforcement of same that gives a predictable result. First, though, we have to learn what it is we are trying to control - and THAT is the other naure of the beast - collective ignorance.

Once again: it is not exactly accurate to call these people "capitalists" since they don't spend money they have earned, but money that was simply re-distributed from speculative gains of equities. That is why I reserve the term "Casino Capitalists" for them. In a sane world, such activity would be taxed out of existance or otherwise made criminal - as you hit this one on the head: what finance does today is indeed organized crime at a level no Mafiosa could ever have imagined.

But, that is EXACTLY what we have done letting the banksters become involved in the process. A commodities exchange should be EXACTLY what it was and it's name implies: the marketplace is between a producer or owner of a physical commodity and a buyer. The way to get the thieving bastards the hell out of being able to set barriers to entry and market manipulation is to simply require that if you want to buy a commodity you MUST both own what you are selling and take physical possession when you are buying. When banks get involved, the "market" is no longer a response to buyers and sellers bidding to negotiate a deal with THEIR interests in mind, but bankers using huge blocks of OPM (other people's money - pronounced "opium") to take control of product for speculative and manipulative activity of the banks that skim off huge blocks of bux that pass on as an included cost to the ultimate consumer. There is a HUGE difference between a "market economy" of a capitalistic system based on supply and demand and the "market" activities of speculators within the Casino Capitalistic system based on what the greedy bastards can steal from hapless consumers.

You need a reality check on the "economic hardships" front. What we HAVE is economic hardship from shipping all of our value added production to a foreign nation that does not share our ideas of quality control, honesty and ethics in making the things that are draining OUR economy dry. If full and meaningful employment and using the financial and natural resources on hand are your idea of "economic hardship" then bring it on.

By "We the People" being so ignorant and complacent as to allow banks to place their speculative activity above real business financing.

The speculative activity of finance is what is the cause of problem #1 - and that is easily stopped by taxing speculative gain - hard. When it comes to oil, mineral, gold, etc. this is once again where we have let finance stick their very unwelcome nose in the door of commodities markets. They add no value but play all kinds of manipulative games not because they are delivering some useful service but because they interfere with actual markets that will exist all on their own. Once again, being a speculative activity, you just tax it 99% of day one and it stops. The ONLY people that should be entitled to the benefits of producing and selling a commodity are the producers. The way to keep it honest is to require that anyone trading a commodity have physical possession (which banks seldom do). I happen to be in the resource business, and have watched our prices jerk all over the place due to the financiers' games.

VERY different. First, you need to understand the proportion of Wall/Bay Street that is involved with IPOs and POs. That is miniscule but their ONLY contribution TO business. Once the placement is made, the Street has nothing to do with the company at all. Go to a balance sheet and you will see clearly there is a P&L but the "Market Value" is something mentioned in a note and does not and can not appear on the balance sheet - as it has NOTHING to do with the company. the Street then proceeds to trade the equity created by the placement. And THAT is where it all falls apart. We give a free ride to speculative gain, so the street plays with information (analysts) who get the brokers and traders to run the PERCEIVED value up and down like a toilet seat. With the shift to where one has the POSSIBILITY to earn 10x, 100x or even 1000x their value from the speculative gain (that once again I need to point out creates NO wealth) people put their money seldom in the actual investment for the purposes of building and running the company, but buy the equity in the HOPES that they can bet on the value at the Casino and participate in that speculative gain - that of course COULD be many, many times greater than any actual profits the company makes and shares by paying dividends (which is wealth that HAS been created by operating the company). Then there are the "synthetic instruments" (derivatives for one). The size of that market is many, many orders of magnitude greater than the entire GDP of the WORLD. What that does is move massive amounts of money and discretionary use of money into bank/finance hands. As a result the barrier to entry for a company is OUTRAGEOUS and if you want to be funded - you sure as hell aren't going to Wall/Bay street until you are already a fairly significant business. THAT is how we have allowed Main Street (where genuine wealth is created and real and productive jobs exist) to be de-funded.

You NEED to be worried what people do with their own money. It directly affects what value you money has (drastically dilluted by speculative gain, as the needed increase in the money supply is YOUR/OUR liability). The useless tits in government are once again - no different from the welfare bum and the Bay Street mogul - they create no wealth (from which we all benefit and pay the bills) to simply re-distributing wealth - that simply costs us directly. The more we shift our economy to wealth re-distribution from the speculative economy of Casino Capitalists to the re-distribution by the runaway army of total waste we call government - the greater the personal and government debt and the less value our meager earnings have to sustain it all. In fact, YOU are the exact reason we are in such a mess: worry about your own little world and not give a flying purple fuck about the rest of us. For structural reform to work, we need to accomplish two things: reduce government to the job of legislating, regulating and enforcing - WITHOUT granting any special privilege to ANYONE - and stop the shift in economic efforts from productive work (that creates wealth) to speculative gain (that DOES NOT create any wealth - just inflation).

It REALLY needs to change. There is a dramatic difference between "investing" (what markets SHOULD be for - i.e. IPOs and POs) and simply gambling (buying existing equities or artificial instruments such as derivatives to speculate on their value). We have let the banksters move the movement of money from Main Street (funding that guy who MAKES the gizzmos) to simply trading speculative devices. This is what allows them to re-distribute trillion$$ that must be covered by inflating the money supply to cover their speculative gains. THAT is a direct liability to the taxpayer. Also, shifting the flow of money from investing to speculating means that the barriers to access to market capital to business becomes very high - thus Main Street is de-funded while Wall Street takes the cake and eats it too. We need to put people to work creating wealth, not re-distributing it. The welfare bum in the corner house is no different from the Wall Street whiz kid = neither creates any wealth at all, just re-distributes it. The difference that does exist is one costs the economy billions while the other costs trillions. We SHOULD have had all this shit on the table in '08, but by then Goldman Sucks literally owned government, so instead of being dashed on the rocks for their treachery they were rewarded with unlimited access to the taxpayers back pockets and given complete run of the legislative and regulatory process that once brought them under control after 1929.

The LPC has bought and paid for the Canadian media with well over $2 Bn of our grandchildren's money, so the idiot-in-chief thinks he can bully ANY new media with impunity...and he can. Mostly because we are so stupid we fit the LPC mold and allow it with typical ignorance and complacency. Going back to Zeiteists post: we now have several generations who think a disaster is going from 3 chickens in the pot to two. Soft would be an understatement in the extreme.

Harper would be able to put things back together, but to repair the unbelievable amount of damage from the idiots (yes, we have a cabinet full of things just as bad as the PMO) will take an all-star cabinet of business people - and I doubt there are enough who are willing to go down that road - now that it has been shyte upon by the Little Tur....uh...TRUdeau.

Yes, there are no doubt many more issues at play. One thing you might notice, though, is that I am not very strong on blindly accepting the status quo of "experts" in any particular field. While I don't know much about the "soft sciences" I deal daily with lack of expertise of so-called experts - especially when inter-disciplinary issues crop up in engineering, physics and materials. Our failing as a community is in requiring actual competence, maintained demonstration of same but most of all broader understanding of the underlying science to virtually every profession and discipline. If our "experts" were all actually experts we would live in a fully sustainable world devoid of disease, pestilence, war, discrimination, etc. And, we don't. Says it all.

My criminal exposure has been from working (one LOOONNNGGGG volunteer stint) inside of a provincial institution, having a son-in-law working inside of a max security (who shares more you your point of view than mine) but mostly a life long friend as I described. From his experiences (and they are considerable and significant) the vast majority of those who study crime just aren't getting it right. I understand your position, it's just that I don't agree with it in detail. Part of understanding Wyoming is realizing the few problems we DO have come from outside and outsiders - both well and ill intentioned outsiders, but outsiders none-the-less who will never understand WY. It's not just a matter of criminals also having guns, it is a matter that any criminal stupid enough to bugger around in WY is GOING to pay the price - mostly off the books. We have unprotected assets all over that wide open place, and any criminal worth his salt (such as the ones who routinely raid properties around Saskatoon to plunder residences, shops, etc. for tools, materials and valuable) could easily rob us blind - but they don't. They KNOW if they do, there WILL be consequences, they will be severe and nobody is going to be able to protect them.

I understand what and why you are saying this, but in a strange co-incidence I happen to have had a very good look at criminal life two times in my years. What I have come to understand is that there are about 3 kinds of people incarcerated: those who didn't realize they were doing something criminal, those who are happy to be inside and away from bad influence and those who are genuinely criminal minds that are spending their time there to become better criminals and make broader associations. What they have taught me (vicariously, I might add) is that there is really one thing they respect - violence worse than they perpetrate. One of my very good friends went from being an armed robber to being an advocate for people running afoul of the law. He was eventually hired by some blue chip do-gooder agency as their token and was on call 24x7 to sort out people's problems. He would intervene in physical confrontations or court appearance and anything in between. He actually straightened a LOT of people out, but it all started with him being about twice anyone else's size and strength and could terminate altercations by brute force - for which they respected him greatly. Trying to reason with them (as you clearly point out is NOT really possible on a reasonable level) simply gets you nowhere. He eventually opened a string of residences (sort of like halfway houses) and was even approached to try to open private jails in Canada - mostly because of his extreme success in handling and getting some stability from "hard case" clients. From my time in Wyoming, where EVEYRONE is armed and vigilante justice is constantly there - we simply don't have much in the line of crime going on. It's not quite as it is portrayed in Yellowstone with bodies flying left and right - but if you were to try to push a criminal wave through the area - it would be.

The standard greeting to newcomers in our area of Wyoming is to inform them what to do in event of a breakin. You are told to call or otherwise challenge them. When they turn to face you, you can now claim to be defending yourself under fear for your life. Then you put the round between their eyes to make damn sure they are dead. That saves you the hassle of dealing with lawyers. We don't get very many breakins in rural Wyoming. I have no pity for criminals who are injured or killed during crimes. It is little different from the person who chooses the level of risk in climbing mountains or other extreme sports...except that crime inevitably results in victims. IF (and boy, that's a big IF) we had any collective brains, we would realize that our first priority should be to protect the victims, not the criminals. BTW: one thing I would endorse is the freedom from prosecution of victims or their immediate family if they retaliate against their criminal perpetrator(s) up to a comparable level of loss or injury. Do that, and you would see crime plummet overnight. '

No, just cut them off completely. What kind of "payola" would you expect would work since the GG's office and UK royalty have no effective power outside of incidental failure of government ???? BTW: sort of why communism fails. ANY system will fail given access to power that allows unlimited granting of privilege. This is why Casino Capitalism will take out the economy of the world. No difference between commie leaders scalping their countries or Wall Street robbing the world blind. NEITHER has much of a track record of creating one penny of wealth - BOTH do little more than simply re-distribute it...into their own back pockets. It's not communism that makes communism fail, it's people...greedy people. Any time greedy people have the power to grant themselves and their friends privilege over the rest of us, they will ultimatly consume themselves and their hosts with their greed.

If I had no other obligations in life and someone gave me a month of absolute authority to fix Canada: government would be reduced to doing NOTHING outside of legislation, regulation and enforcement. Partisanship and lobbying would be illegal within government. Elected offices subject to recall. Deficit budgets would be impossible without an emergency. ANYTHING granting privilege of ANY person or company over another would not be permitted. Speculative gain would be taxed out of existence and dividends would never be taxed. You may find this strange, but most social services would be eliminated, replaced by GAI (taxed back at flat rate above the basic exemption level). Obviously, in my world, the aboriginal situation would change drastically. The system of government would retain the GG and links to UK royals...but no money would change hands. Dumping Bay Street and Wall Street would give the economy back to real business. Aboriginals, immigrants, ANYONE would be free to join the economy or remain at a very low level EQUAL to everyone else at the GAI level (which, with elimination of speculation could find that places to live with stable, low costs could be found). My Manifesto.

Yes, reserves ARE federal land, and technically - and practically - they are responsible for utilities. Problem is: they DO put those in place in most cases - and the reserves are paid to operate them. Of course, they fail to do any maintenance and seldom meet even the minimal needs of monitoring - never mind protecting the water source from contamination. If you were not getting clean water and had access to virtually unlimited and unaccountable funds, wouldn't you just go out into the back yard and fix what's there or design and build something better? After all, the technologies required are over-the-counter and available freely anywhere. The hardware is also very simple and commonly available. Here is an example of the problem: https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/potlotek-first-nation-chief-hires-water-experts-from-ireland-to-assess-crisis-1.3588623 The Irish expert happens to be a personal friend of mine. Now: as an example of what SHOULD happen: The Chief at Potlotek got together with other bands and formed their own water security agency. Now, here is another problem: the Feds will gladly give any reserve pretty much anything they want, BUT - the contracts to do so are administered by the feds - and granted not on the basis of technical merit but more likely how much the kickbacks are to various federal employees and political entities. Potlotek knows this (from working with my Irish friend) and intends to administer on their own. EXACTLY what any responsible municipal government would do.

Uhhh.....clean drinking water in Canadian communities happens when the Canadian community gets off its ass and designs a system, raises the cost from tax and installs it. If you don't have clean drinking water, the answer is to ask how it is your municipal government has failed miserably to do anything about it...other than whine to Whitey to bail your stupid ass out. I can't speak for reserves outside of the area I know (MB/SK) but "first nations" (now THERE'S a load of pure BS) have been given enough ROC cash to buy casinos and hotels, lots of off-reserve businesses such as trucking companies and airlines. They tend to burn down the schools, drink the hotels dry, let the trucks go to ruin and crash the airplanes. You may not have noticed they do DIDDLY SQUAT to help themselves other than help themselves to endless cash that is for the most part squandered. Many have also been given water treatment plants and infrastructure - which they are paid to manage and they simply watch it run to failure (as is the case with off-grid power generation) then call Whitey to come and fix it. Now, instead, they call the CBC to play politics of guilt - as the result is gilded.

Of course he is - as is virtually everyone else on this planet. The only difference is he makes little effort to hide it