cannuck

Giving people "money for nothing" is not helping them, it is creating a culture of dependence and entitlement. I would much rather reduce real world costs to have the same effect. Investment would stop with big tax on speculative gains, it would simply go back to where it belongs - investing in productive enterprises than can earn a profit and pay a dividend. Once you kill off speculation, you kill off the main driver behind inflation.

Economics fails virtually every test as a "science". It has become a tool for the banksters to train people to nod their heads mindlessly and calculate shit that is NOT part of the actual economy (i.e. speculative activity). The only thing more intellectually dishonest than an economist would be a civil engineer dumb enough to put steel in concrete. Helped how? Do you mean just throw money at the problem? The real issue is how much housing costs have increased - mostly be cause we give a free ride on the tax system to the speculative gains of real estate activity. Tax the shit out of such gains, and all of a sudden real estate costs will subside into reality that people might be able to afford.

There have always been professionals, technologists, technicians and labourers in every manufacturing process. The difference is: so many of the "worker bees" were demanding to be paid better than the queen bee that they killed off the hive. Now that automation is taking over so much, the jobs have simply shifted to one of building and maintaining automation. Yes, this brave new world needs a LOT more skill and education for participants. As I said: you must either move up or move out (to WalMart greeting jobs).

In private business, we dump the ones who are non productive, screwups, thieves, etc. In government (and much union) they are promoted and protected, even celebrated. The real issue is that the vast majority of things government does they have no business doing (reference Erik Nielsen). As far as troubleshooting technology: that is my "day job" for largest client. Our "techies" are not in cubicles, they are out in the field keeping the lights on for industry in North America (until the "white picket fence" syndrome - i.e. marriage and family takes them out of the field). In most industry, the time spent fixing the technology is what makes the productivity and infrastructure services that provides incredible lifestyle we all get to enjoy.

Being courteous is VERY different from diverting the wealth of multiple potential export clients and countries to a privileged few in Quebec - and using the resources of the state to do so (and thereby delivering often far substandard goods and services to the detriment of our national reputation). Also, denying employment to possibly more capable people because they haven't subscribed to the same "courtesy" is a racket. Truthfully: the best thing that could happen to ANYONE (and everyone) is to not work for government, but that's another issue.

The government's job SHOULD be to provide a stable, equitable and fair set of rules and enforcement, NOT to interfere in the marketplace by picking winners and losers by interference - which is what our government (and the US, I should add) does constantly. Unions of course are the antithesis of free markets. Just as do government employees, they believe that they should be entitled to a free ride by the granting of privilege (by government) to forcibly keep their jobs. Bass Ackwards. Government employees are largely the least ambitious, most entitled people in the workforce. By their very nature they are the LAST people in the world you would want running anything but the shithouse - and they would probably make that prohibitively expensive and totally non functional. People in today's increasingly more technical workplace need to realize that the need for unskilled assembly workers is not great and decreasing daily. Either move up or move out. There should be no special provision to accommodate those who believe the are owed a job and a living. Most of all, there is no place for envy of those who have had the sense and made the effort to be able to meet modern demands in their industry.

Those engineers and techs EARNED that privilege by going to school to learn to be engineers and techies.

To really know the answer, I suggest the Golden Rule...follow the gold. Who paid for and arranged the demonstrations? I suspect no fuss in YT since Doug Ford was not elected there and the looney left media could not (arrange?) cover an attack on anyone who threatens the Liberal/liberal grip on power.

Just to complete your education on the Feds screwing Canadians to the benefit of Ontario, read about the Crow Rates.

A gated community in Brownsville may be located in the deep South, but it really isn't IN the Deep South. Of course, the same community for Eastern Snowbirds in FL means they can't communicate since Spanish is pretty rare around here. BTW: we have a similar situation in Newfoundland. While technically they speak "English" the dialects were isolated hundreds of years ago from all over the UK and mixed into the pot. VERY unique place linguistically.

The Catholic school system in SK offers immersion in French, Ukrainian and German. Should not be a surprise, since German is the second language spoken here, Ukrainian the third and French the fourth. Indigenous languages probably exceed French, but are more than one language - and of course offered in aboriginal communities - but I do not think in an immersion setting (haven't lived up North for a while, now curious about that). Our children were raised in French (lots of primary immersion schools, but only one high school worth of students in all second languages due to attrition). The comment about France above is interesting to us. Our kids did an exchange with schools in Nantes. Kids from SK spoke nearly flawless Parisienne French, but children from Nantes were not immersion and spoke very weak English. While Canada may have two official languages, fortunately (IMHO of course) at least here kids learn actual French - and would have a tough time dealing with the butchered Quebecois version of the language. Kind of like an English speaker moving to the deep South of the USA. Due to the huge benefits to STEM abilities of students of language (and music) IMHO this (second language immersion) is some of the best money we spend on education. And, yes, our kids are accomplished musicians and scientists - public school education having been a significant part of it.

Agreed. However, something goofy such as esparante or whatever it was called may not have the things that the best of the bunch would need: some hard and fast rules on how new words are structured from roots. While English may not be perfect (in fact far from it) it DOES have some workable rules that allow for new words. There is a reason that pretty much everything in academia is published in English. Besides, we have already establish that I am a greedy, selfish prick, so since I don't have good enough memory to be really good at more than one language, I would prefer the international standard was the one I already speak.

To be more precise, languages are not that difficult to learn, they are just very difficult to learn a) to speak well, and b) to translate idioms, sayings, ideas, etc. to fit the rules and nuances of other languages. Our children are multi-lingual, and routinely take me to task for clumsy translations to and from French. I was lucky to have a handler once who specialized in Japanese. He was so good at it, he could teach Japanese classical literature, language and even technical subjects in a Japanese university (his PhD was in cultural anthropology - which led him down that path). Working with him over several months in yet another foreign nation gave me plenty of opportunity to see up close just how intense one's education and experience needs to be to be totally capable in a very different language. His particular skill was in deciphering how Japanese changed the key to military encryption codes (yes, WWII era). I am in awe of people who are effectively able to master more than one language, but even at that level, there is still a LOT more to learn of the culture to really get the drift of the language.

It is great, but not very free. BTW: the NDP not only takes money from the unions, it IS a union. It was formed by the formal amalgamation of the CCF and the CLC.

and with right to work legislation (if we were actually a free country) it wouldn't matter. Unions would become obsolete.

Any such regulation would deliver EXACTLY what Trudeau Sr. intended - just society. Since there would be no significant business left in the country, we would be left with just society. Pierre's dream come true.

Uh...that's not where they stick their head. You are being too polite.

I could write a book about the things I have found regarding this topic. Long ago, I did a quick assessment of where military contracts were awarded - and at that time about 95% went to Quebec. As I traveled around the world for work, I found that Canadian embassies were extremely francophone - in every country. When on one project, our partners had at their own expense brought an ambulance built in NS designed specifically for their country's needs. When their government contacted Canada for the endless and well known freebies from Canada, the tender to supply was circulated ONLY in Quebec - the NS manufacturer left completely out of the loop. The PQ company supplied pieces of shyte, and that country swore off buying any more ambulances at all from Canada. After running into similar BS in another country, I came home and looked up a fellow who was at the time "Minister of Everything". In his words, the ENTIRE purpose of every federal "business development" agency and effort was to pander to Quebec. I later found out from an engineering friend (who was ADM of Ec Dev for SK before going into private business) that he had discovered that decades ago when trying to bring business here. EVERY contact he made and tried to develop would evaporate, not into thin air, but into very French air. ALL of his information once it hit a Federal office was dispensed to Quebec, and ONLY Quebec - where more often than not, the potential business proponent would get pissed off and simply not bother coming to Canada. I once did a fairly significant and extremely private project with member companies from 4 different countries. The lead had sent me on several critical missions to be conducted in absolute secrecy. I was given only one specific condition: if I got into trouble, DO NOT go to a Canadian embassy, go to theirs first or second choice a US embassy. When I asked why, they were very clear that any business information and secrets that I might possess would be lost to others (polite way of saying Quebec) the moment I walked or got dragged into a Canadian embassy anywhere in the world. Seems that everyone else knows what is wrong here - we just don't.

It is happening to me. I am busy training my replacement at my "day job" contract client's business. He is 25 and can do most of the things I do for them, plus one more that I can't. What makes you think that taking up space should give you any special privilege? I have been the key person in what I do (as a contractor) to this client for 29 years, financed them in their early days, partnered with them later on. In fact, if contractors had employee numbers, my seniority would give me #1 (out of about 1,000). Businesses are NOT social service agencies. Almost EVERY job should be awarded strictly on merit. IF we had right-to-work legislation, that is exactly what would evolve, as it should. And, before you get carried away with what a cruel SOB I am: I have kept one of my US businesses open and operating at a massive loss for at least 8 years longer than it should have existed - because our lead hand has a very sick wife who would be uninsurable if they could not remain in our health care plan. BUT: that is a choice I made on behalf of my back pocket and other shareholders. Why do you think government should be able to force me or any other business into such a situation? (In fact, that is exactly what the US government does NOT get right - universal sick care insurance).

Geez, our gubmints gots da alky, drugs, tabac and gambling. Next thing you know they will snatch (pun intended) prostitution from the Mafia and Hell's Angels to be right on top. What the fxck, we're already getting screwed by them anyhow.

This is exactly the kind of problem of John Q. Public (and elected officials) trying to understand technical things. No, wind on a rooftop is NOT a very good idea at all. There is an extremely good reason why wind farms are located on ridges and have towers in the 50 meter and up range. Flowing fluids suffer from something called boundary layer effects. Essentially the flow right at the wall of a pipe, or in this case near the surface of the earth is extremely slow due to the interaction of the fluid and its container/surroundings. You might notice that over land, the wind you felt all day dies down at night. Without the sun stirring up convective currents from the surface, the boundary layer next to the surface comes to almost a complete stop most nights. The daytime wind you feel at the surface on land is just a small portion being dragged along near the boundary between fluid and solid compared with the steady flow that is just 50 to 100 meters away. When the overall flow has to limb over a ridge, it moves closer to the surface and the "squeeze" speeds it up even more. Thus, exactly where, why and how one locates a wind farm - with towers high enough to reach into the full velocity fluid flow. The other place you put the towers is offshore, where the surface tends to have steady (but reduced velocity) flow, and one can reach up into the main stream easily. Look at the 1000 millibar and surface winds around the world, and you will see the dramatic difference over land vs. water. That difference is aloft, but much closer to the surface over water...thus another place one puts wind farms. Now, you might have SEEN wind farms, but have you ever worked in one? I do that often, and can tell you that even the newest turbines are extremely high maintenance and older ones are long since obsolete because of extreme unreliability and ridiculous maintenance costs. Most, if not all windmills on this continent are there for political reasons - driven by subsidies of one kind or another, NOT good business choices.

I was a civilian employee on the base where I was raised when the Hellyer white paper destroyed the armed forces. Part of the Trudeau plan (consistent with the whole B&B nonsense) was to increase French presence in senior ranks. I watched with absolute horror when every francophone NCO on the base, REGARDLESS of ability (or even mental stability) was given an invitation to get their commission. Several years later, when I thought things might have calmed down, I headed to a recruiting office (I could probably go DEO) and the recruiter told me in no uncertain terms since I was not Quebecois and only marginally bilingual, I didn't have a hope in hell. This crap didn't start yesterday - that was nearly 50 years ago.

What Westerners do not understand is the China is nothing but predatory in its business ambitions. They will do whatever it takes to come out on top. Things such as stealing IT is not some back room hacker kid out for jollies, it is a highly organized cadre of Red Army professional IT people hacking into every computer they can access in the world. Trade some cheap drugs for cash and it is a win-win....for China.

Experts in the US auto industry have predicted a lot of things. That's why GM and Chrysler went tits up.

Why indeed? If the 5 year, or 5 MINUTE guy is more capable, then he/she should be bumping the 25 year vet on merit.