cannuck

I want them to stay the fuck home where they belong.

So, you expect me to sacrifice the lives of my friends and families so you can gloat over the virtue signaling of some poor person in another country having greater income. My reply to you would be in two words totally seven letters and quite rude (but appropriate). BTW: there are just over 4,000 hospitalizations right now, with about 900 in ICUs. You assume the 1,200 hospitals in Canada have 1,200 ICUs and that is far from the case. Canada has under 5,000 ICU beds, so right now, 20% are tied up with Covid patients. Load on medical staff is another and greater problem, as is supply of PPE.

We already have over a hundred thousand residents on the shield up in resource country, and there has been a HUGE effort to get them into jobs (some successful, most...not so). I think 100% of new immigrants should have an on-reserve address - WTF they want to come here to enjoy the Canadian way of life, why not put them into the most privileged communities in the country and the ONLY genuine Canadians for neighbours.

I agree with this caution. As I believe I mentioned in some other related post to this topic, suspension of freedoms should only be possible in a declared emergency, war, etc. i.e. the kind of thing that a PM or Premier alone could never declare, but would require some VERY specific terms and parliamentary vote to declare. Of course, since we don't have recall, that is still a bit problematic, but until we learn to change from rule-by-special-interest to actual representative democracy in our form(s) of government, it's the best we can do. I can support travel restrictions in the case of pandemic, I think even you would have to admit for rather obvious reasons. But, I sure don't take the issue of suspending personal rights and freedoms lightly.

As Michael implies, elitism is a natural attribute within humanity. Even so in the animal world (alfa males, for instance). The problem we have had for the last century or so is that the new religion is greed, and within that religion the elite are those who take the most money while contributing the least. When elitism is granted due to privilege it is a sad state of affairs. It should only be achieved by merit. Until we as an entire race learn to understand such things, it will just continue to get worse.

My best bud's eldest son just returned to New Zealand for another 6 month contract. The drill is to get a current Covid test result then apply to NZ for entry. Once you have applied, you have 7 days to arrive (they approve or reject very quickly). When you arrive, you are TAKEN to a quarantine hotel and kept there. You are tested once again and then monitored constantly. At end of quarantine you are free to carry on. Only exception is critical essential services (which he is) but even that takes permission and is a rare exception.

If someone decides they need to build a highway or a hospital that needs your land, it will be gone under eminent domain authority we grant to government. We live with this all day, every day.

I am more Libertarian than most, but let's also try to be pragmatic. First of all, we DO (or SHOULD) hold politicians to a far higher standard, because we elect them to lead us. IMHO that means presenting a public figure in line with what is policy and "for the greater good". Personal freedoms are a cornerstone of Western democracies, so it's not fair to assume these rights have been breached without just cause. If it was a matter of putting only yourself at risk, IMHO go for it. BUT: when the consequences of you travelling and not exercising due caution (un-necessary travel itself being the case) is that someone else could be come infected and/or deceased and YOUR treatment (as well as your victims') will cost the taxpayer a significant amount of money, it's time to make some kind of declaration of public emergency and suspend personal freedoms. The other consequence especially of poor examples being set by politicians is that everyone else gets the "if they can then I can" when business in general and owners in particular are being asked or demanded to make very expensive sacrifices for that one and same public good. Always remember that an elected politician is being paid by US, not doing things on his or her own nickel.

Wonder where the money is going (other than some of the obvious CERB/CRB, etc. programs)? I hope it is acceptable to post a facebook link, but it is pretty bad when the mainstream media never seems to ask these questions....except the mainstream media in other countries: https://www.facebook.com/CanadaProud.org/videos/214342143598477

The problem is: we are not producers of automation, nor much of a user. The jobs we had are simply gone....forever. We are far too busy with important things: virtue signaling, importing terrorists who will vote liberal, protecting criminals in SNC, We, etc.

Thing is, our way of life has already changed dramatically. China has emptied much of the meager value added from our economy. Take the automobile industry: Canada was a big player in feeding the US car manufacturing industry, but China has gutted that role almost completely. It's gone, and not likely ever going to come back. Take WallyWorld as another: probably a hundred thousand small businesses in manufacturing and distribution of consumer goods are gone - thanks to their success in killing both across North America by shifting their supply chain from US to China. There are lot of other examples, but these are two of the biggies. We have had governments of both partisan persuations, and NEITHER have shown any balls or brains (Canadian, eh?) in standing up to this onslaught.

This is the argument put forward by a former, very left leaning neighbour. We have public insurance on cars here, and the same crown corp does a fair bit of residential insurance - to which of course said neighbour used. She believed since she had paid premiums, she should be entitled to every opportunity to file a claim. The whole neigbourhood in the past 20 years has replaced its roofing once over - except here house that is on #4 - from supposed "hail damage". I guess the dark cloud that followed her everywhere she went crapped ice only onto her roof - sparing we fortunate mere mortals all around her. This is why I like sin taxes, and would gladly support a "fat tax". Since we DO have socialized sick care and health care, those who abuse the former by ignoring the latter should IMHO pay their dissproportionate share based on the risks associated with their behaviour. Same could apply to vaccination - just hard to collect a sin tax for something that one chooses NOT to do.

IIRC it is Yellow Fever vaccine required for India (but not for all countries). I could do quite well without going back there - not my favourite place. Now that I think of it: I think Nigeria also requires a vaccination certificate.

I can recognize the emotion, but let's deal with fact: the same government pays for 100% of our sick care costs - so the only way I can see that working out is that if you choose to avoid mandatory vaccination you should be also choosing to go it on your own for sick care costs. BUT: since we let people smoke, drink, drug and eat things that are also highly likely to kill you or at least make you expensive to keep around, there needs to be some clarity on how that all goes down as well. Question for you: do you think the public should be on the hook for the cost of rescuing a climber who has a fall since he decided he should climb a mountain? Not being facetious, just curious.

First comment: NOBODY can predict their outcome from a SARS Cov2 infection. It could be a minor pulmonary involvement or it could include as well cardiac, vascular, neurological and renal damage with lifelong compromises or fatal outcomes. Do you feel lucky today???? There are already precedents on travel and vaccinations certificates (India for instance, have to have my certificate to get visa and enter) so not any kind of a stretch. What I expect we will see is vax cert PLUS valid test no more than a few days old. The airline industry does not want to mimic the cruise lines in screwing up royally and going tits up. I MUST travel for business reasons, and having been denied travel insurance for the last 10 months (thus no international travel) I will be at the front of the line for vaccination as soon as I possibly can.

Buying or trading existing equities is NOT in any way "investing" since you aren't putting a penny into a company - you are simply gambling on a value of something that already exists over which you have no control (and if you did, you might well end up in court on charges of insider trading). If you only put money into POs, IPOs or freshly issued bonds, you would be an investor. But, if you really want to be "safe", invest in something you CAN have full control over - yourself. Small business is not a cakewalk, but if you know what you are doing and invest in something at which you have expertise, contacts and experience, you can do one hell of a lot better than any bank or wild-ass guess of trading equities. Take equipment, for example: if I put let's say $100k into a machine that does something I know and can either use, hire someone to operate or can rent out, I expect to get my money back in 3 years or so - a lot less if I am going to operate myself. Most of all, don't quit your day job until you are earning enough on the side investment activity to be self sufficient. I have a son-in-law with a fantastic government job who is walking out the door at a very young age - since he earns far more money on his side gig.

Season's Greetings to one and all. Stay safe and lets have a 2021 better than 2020.

Excellent question. There WERE some rapid PCR tests around that could be done at point of care and conceivably be made into home test kits. Some of these were Canadian and hit the news with great fanfare, but since then, crickets. There IS also an extremely good development of CRISPR technology to make first a CLIA level complex lab able to run comparable accuracy CRISPR tests on much cheaper and faster equipment but for some reason that has sort of gone quiet too. I believe a POC (point of care) level of such testing is due for release in next few weeks with home "lab in a packet" test technology not far behind. CRISPR tech can detect infection within a few hours vs. days for PCR. The simple and quick tests that have been around for quite a while are serological and rely on antibodies being present. Too late to be effective in prevention and not nearly the accuracy, but fantastic for doing contact tracing as very inexpensive and not need technicians or professionals to sample and process. I think you will find that the researchers and developers are hard at it and making great progress, but the media is far too busy spending every waking moment slagging Trump to follow anything that is important.

The Yankee Troll is right about most of this. Biggest problem we have is the blockage of the Keystone pipeline completion and the inevitable failure of the Trans-Mountain expansion. That forces product into rail cars, that cuts the price of heavy crudes at the wellhead a good $10 a bbl. We DO have the financial ability to build the necessary pipelines, but we do NOT have the political will and educated/reasonable population to pull it off. BTW: yes, WCS blends are discounted heavily, but I see almost exactly the same seasonal price for Wyoming Heavy Sour - other than the rare outlier condition that is usually a short term transient. To make matter worse: there IS a safe way to ship undiluted bitumen to Asian markets by rail (in 20' containers and container tanks) that is quite cost competitive. Container ships come here to dump endless hundreds of thousands of containers full of Chinese junk into West Coast ports every year, but the backhaul of containerized resources is minimal and a very easy and cost effective thing to do. The logical point of export is Prince Rupert as Vancouver is the wrong direction, very busy, unreliable and very expensive due to radical trade unions. Dilbit (dilluted bitumen) may flow freely enough for pipelines, but it is an extremely costly way to move oil by pipeline as you need to ship diluent backwards along a second route - or make diluent at the other end of the line (harder to do with heavy oil) and something you really do NOT want to spill. By knocking the light ends off of bituminous crudes, you end up with a very safe product that cools off to a solid and is very easily and safely shipped in a container or container tank. This is patently obvious to anyone in the oil and logistics business. It is also a big pipeline problem because one of the first things the Liberals did when they bought the pipeline to Vancouver is to kill of competition to the Westbound markets by prohibiting shipment from Prince Rupert, but no restrictions at all from Vancouver. We don't make a bunch of upgraders to make syncrude (synthetic crude - that DOES belong in pipelines to the USA and should be legislated IMHO as the ONLY way to pipe out heavy crude capacity) and then refine it into product because, once again, we don't have the pipeline capacity to mover refined product out. Large US markets are mostly coastal and East of Miss, so distance is a killer going East of AB and the mountains and existing CA production is a barrier to the West.

Which is precisely why China is in a financial position to do as it wants. Manufacturing creates wealth - Casino Capitalism (what now dominates the US economy) creates no wealth, only wealth re-distribution. Greed has killed the geese that laid the US's golden eggs. The inscrutable and endlessly calculating and patient Chinese will pick up the pieces. Come back to me after you have been in business for 25 years in China.

so far. Now that the dum...ah,,,,DEMmycrats are back in power, it will continue to get larger.

China already had its way with GM (it owns an absolute MINIMUM of 50% of the tangled web of companies, in many cases much more). It also pulled a lot of other GM Asian business INTO China. China is well on its way to owning the USA as well (take a look at general aviation - most of the big names and several of the smaller ones are 100% Chinese owned now - and so it goes in MANY industries). You are right: Canada can't stop anyone (serious case of no balls and not much better for brains) but the US can't and won't either.

There are 3 levels that we engage with China upon: Economic, Political/diplomatic and Military. The whole diplomatic reason for dealing with China in the first place was the concept that if they became our trading partner, they would be less likely to remain a military opponent. Our politicians and diplomats were so inept at seeing much beyond the end of their nose they did the right thing by inviting China to export to us, but did the VERY wrong thing by not making it conditional to gain only access for products made to environmental, safety, quality and human rights standards that Canadian could accept. We did this out of pure ignorance and stupidity, whereas the Yanks did out of arrogance and ignorance. I have been watching China from a ringside seat starting in mid 90s, and way back then, I had learned enough about China (my business partner had dealt with the Chinese government for more than 30 years by then) to realize that the light at the end of that tunnel was a very big train that was going to run over the US (I thought in 50 years, but cut that in half in reality). One thing common to China under whatever system of government is that there is precious little regard for human life or rights. Another thing that Westerners never seem to appreciate is that China has never been closer to being one whole country than it is right now. It will NOT stop until has all of its component pieces together until it has absorbed Taiwan, one way or another. What is common to Canada is that we have maintained a standing army and a reserve force for over a century that is based upon the idea of defending countries where human rights and lives are threatened, not aiding them in their expansion. China has no need to invade Canada, it will simply buy us...with our own money. But to invite the Chinese military in - you know, the same people who maintain a MASSIVE digital intelligence gathering network that steals IT and IP by the terrabyte every hour - is little short of treason. While I have great respect and even admiration for what the post Mao governments that Deng put on course and have achieved, I am also highly aware of the Chinese military - my Father-in-law was a PPCLI vet who fought in Korea. It is very appropriate to not just respect China, but to fear it as well. They simply don't fight by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

Harper actually worked for a living, and rose from the mail room to being an economist - getting his bachelor's and master's while working. Most of all, he was NOT a goddamned lawyer and as far away from an entitled, silver spoon spoiled brat as you can get.