cannuck

If you don't already know the answer to that, stick with being an employee. Once you have in depth knowledge of the business you wish to try, and get enough of a track record to give buyers confidence, THEN it might be time to open a business. The odds of success are very small, but you can weigh it heavily in your favour by doing something you are already very good at doing. BTW: if you want to get into engineering and technology, you will need a degree in engineering or diploma in eng tech. Got that yet?

I'm going to guess your a city slicker, probably in the East. The problem is: criminals do NOT live by the law, and once they are on your property or in your home in rural Canada, help is NOT a phone call away. It is left up to YOU do do whatever you are going to do, because the invader is not going to take a time out while you wait for the fuzz to show up. On top of that, you are not likely to know WHAT it is they will transpire, as you don't have a crystal ball and the invader is not sending you a schedule and scope of work before arriving. In rural WY, we are given the distinct instruction to call to an invader, and shoot only when he/she turns towards you - and make damn sure you put it right between their eyes in a defensive move - or you will have to deal with authorities, lawyers, etc. forever. Several states and every province and territory are way too fuzzy about what you can and can't do, should or should not do when you feel your life or your family is threatened. WY, TX and a few others are pretty clear. I am also going to hazard a guess that you do not now nor have ever lived on or near a reserve? Get back to me when you have some idea what that really implies regarding property and family security.

Human decency for one. For me, though - it is to make it better for my children and grandchildren by teaching them how to be productive, contributing and ethical.

It also opens up issues such as polygamy, which, while I don't think is a very good idea, I can't find any logical argument to oppose. Same applies to consensual sex between related adults. BTW: until reading through this thread, I had no idea just how large the parent/child issue was. Yuck!!!

The big problem is sub-Sahran Africa. Not only is it their cultural propensity to procreate, it is a place with such disfunctional government(s) that people simply do what they think they need to do to get by. Of course, the do-gooders of the West will flock to their aid and reward them for having more children, thus validating the whole notion of having more children. For most of the world, prosperity is definitely the best way to bring population under control, but take a look at Nigeria and you can see that the tribalism and corruption mean that even given massive petro wealth, NONE of it gets down to the people - it all gets gobbled up by the criminals who run the country, the state, the town, the business, the family, etc. It will take decades and generations for them to catch up to the rest of the world in having some kind of functional rule of law, social equity, programmes, etc. so the ONLY thing left is some kind of global encouragement for sterilization until such an unlikely thing as them getting their collective shit together takes place.

NO joke. Entertainment is the largest export earner for the USA, and we are eager consumers.

There is some truth to that, but until you see a currency of the BRICS that dominates banking and trade settlements worldwide, you won't see the Greenback fade away. The Euro was headed there, but somehow when the same people who essentially own the FED lent to the PIIGS, it seems to have crashed out of contention. Gee, wonder how that happened?

BUT: the inflationary pressures that SHOULD have resulted failed to materialize. As long as the Greenback enjoys de facto hegemony, real central banks with US balance of payments and many financial instruments designated in USD, they have to jump in and prop it up every time it SHOULD slide, or it wipes them out, too. The thing about the Fed, it is is the only place on the planet where the member banks OWN the central bank lock, stock and barrel and can simply print money (increase the money supply) to cover their gains in speculative and purely synthetic transactions (derivatives, for example) and pass the bill on to the US taxpayer - and get paid for doing so on top of it all.

Good to see you keeping such an open mind.

I can't speak for other racial groups, but I can say with some authority on Chinese. While we didn't "enslave" them, we allowed and encouraged a very large number to come to Canada to build a railroad under conditions far more dangerous than the general population ever had to face. When it was over and done with, we passed an exclusion act that kept Chinese from immigrating - often meaning to join families back together once well esatblished as Canadians. If you know China and Chinese, you would understand that they will NEVER willingly report their financial status to any government. It is impossible to get accurate statistics from them here, never mind in China. However, my own experience is that Chinese immigrants, and especially second generation do much better than average academically. While we did not enslave Japanese, we were only too happy to take their property and imprison whole families for the heinous crime of being Japanese. Compared with the relative welcome wagon at the end of the underground railway, these two Asian identities have paid a fair price for being in Canada.

You generally do NOT want to put refined product into a tanker. It is usually sold down a product pipeline into major markets. Energy East might provide for export, but in reality, we do not have that much in refining capacity and it would just displace imported oil used in the East.

vs. how many tens of thousands of attacks on US policemen by US citizens? I can guarantee you no MI cops are losing any sleep over Canadian attacks.

I am endlessly amused at this "racist" kind of stuff. EVERYONE is a racist - or a liar. Some sort of group identity and discriminatory protection of same is human nature. Yes, there certainly are widely varying degrees of racism, but you can't legislate or regulate human nature.

While I agree in principal, it would be hard to do in practice. You start into medicine with the same degree and don't become a tit doc until and if you choose to specialize. The differences don't end there, but are related to whether or not the procedure is cosmetic for the sake of vanity, or is restorative due to trauma or disease. It would seem to be more equitable and workable to simply tax cosmetic procedures to recover some of the public costs in putting the beneficiary in a position to profit from vanity - and to defer some of the risk costs of the possible medical costs due to malpractice or complications. What I do NOT want to see is anything that could interfere with someone with a medical need from seeking ANY solution to their wants and needs.

THAT would be a recipe for genuine "two tier" problems. "free" schools would probably segregate into second tier quality while full cost schools would up their game to attract students who could see more $$ in private practice. If you stick with the simple business of having government monopolize and genuinely make universal the sick care insurance - as well as being the source of actual health care - the payment for service delivery would remain as it is now - from a prescribed list of approved/in scope procedures covered under insurance. Anything outside of that would, as now, be fee-for-service, but why would you limit the ways and means that patients seek to get service delivered how, when and where THEY choose to get it?????

The secret IMHO is in having universal INSURANCE and letting the client choose to have service delivered by either private or public practicioners. There already IS a "two tiered" (or more) system, so the idea of trapping Canadians who can not afford to travel out of their region or country is disgusting, to say the least. If they want care that public employees can not or will not provide, they should be able to use their insurance money and anything else they chose to use to get what they want. Many other countries have no trouble with private and public service delivery co-existing - nor should they or we. We tend to put our political ideology well ahead of the actual need to deliver sick care to our citizens or their rights to self-determination. Also: que jumpers who go outside of the public delivery system open up a slot for those behind them in line to move forward. That is a win-win.

"carbon tax" has nothing to do with paying for the roads. There is already a "road tax" included in every fuel purchase. The problem is, ALL taxes in Canada simply go into one level of government or the other's general revenue. "Carbon Tax" is just a politically correct way of saying we don't have a clue what to do, so we'll tax some imaginary boogeyman - better yet create a new marketplace where speculators can rip even more money out of the economy by trading credits. To have anything effectively "user pays" we need dedicated tax accounts for dedicated taxes.

Yes, agree that they have such, but my point about them is that in ALL of the other 5, there is nothing to stop private insurance or private service delivery, but the state provided insurance remains. You have a similar system in the US - something like 60% of the population is now covered by government employment, GI/VA, medicare or medicaid - the rest is private. Difference is: in the US if you don't fit into the 60% of privileged to get sick care from the state, you may or may not be able to afford required medical care to stay alive. Overall, you pay twice as much as Canadians to get poorer outcome - and then critiize our system that actually works.

No, sick care in the US is a business. In the rest of the G7, it is a social service. Businesses are allowed to bill the universal insurance provider (state) just as for several other social services provided to or by the state

"at the pump" taxes are not calculated by hand in any place I have ever been, and I buy a LOT of fuel. For road diesel: the vendor simply collects everything at the till based on what the register/computer puts aside from every purchase - or in some cases (Flying J for instance) it does not even show on the receipt as a separate line item. We already have a "two tax rate" system, one for road fuel (including provincial road taxes) and one for non-road (what used to be called "died diesel" or "purple diesel" but now called "reefer fuel" - no, not THAT - i.e. the Trudeau kind of reefer, but refrigeration units on insulated semi trailers). The calculations are usually done from the total amount of fuel bought vs. the total amount of fuel sold in any particular reporting period.

All of the other former G7 countries EXCEPT the US have fully socialized medical insurance, but no restriction on who (public or private) can deliver services. We already have a "mixed" system, except the problem is that legislation gives government monopolies on service delivery. STUPID, IMHO. I should be able to take what is covered by our government's sick care insurance and get it payment to ANYONE who is qualified to deliver. Similarly, I should be able to elect to cue jump by just paying whoever is willing to deliver that service in MY timeframe and at my expense.

Yes, producers sell their own product. The morons in government haven't been around to screw that up since the did the Petrocan thing. Problem is: owners can't sell their product since there is no way to get it to market. Here, I have to agree with the tree huggers - do NOT let dilbit get shipped because it is far greater hazard in event of spills anywhere along the way. By regulating the quality of what can be shipped, you bring a huge value added component into the picture by adding upgraders

what you miss is that Canada does not have any dedicated taxes - very unlike the US. If you allow governments to raise fuel taxes, Trudeau will simply pay a bigger reward to every terrorist who murders an American soldier. If we had dedicated taxes, you would see me on side for fat tax, ciggy tax and of course marijuana tax. Where we could revolutionize our economy overnight is to tax the living shit out of speculative gain. If you flip a house, stock, derivative, etc. in a day, I want to see 99% taxation. Hold it a year, that drops to 95%, and so on at 5% a year until speculative gain (capital gain) is at nominal tax rate. Instead of money being given to banksters to play all kinds of games THAT CREATE NOT ONE PENNY OF WEALTH, money would be rewarded for use to make things and pay a tax-free dividend (as the income at corporate level would already have been taxed).

see previous post. While we may THINK we have good infrastructure, try manufacturing something outside of the Golden Horseshoe and you will find we do not. While we can innovate with the best, when you try to produce you find that things that a US competitor takes for granted (such as a transportation system that actually works and is cost competitive, suppliers that actually HAVE what you need at a price far, far below the ridiculously marked up values of the "official Canadian distributor" and on it goes. About the only thing we have that absolutely outshines a US business model by light years if an reasonably effective and 100% universal sick care system. Petroleum refining does not happen here because we simply let the resource be exported with no value added (I am of course referring to bitumen from Athabasca Oil Sands - which DOES get upgraded by Suncor, Syncrude and Shell, but that is only a tiny bit of the current crude capacity). Refer to what is above and you can see why

Some apologies needed: I am in the middle of a very difficult technical project out of country, and the "easy 5 days" has running into the third week from Hell, with me sometimes on site for 36 hours at a time. Posting time is sometimes stretched pretty tight. Chinese workers DO make but a fraction of what a unionized Canadian might get, but what you need to realize that Chinese workers, businesses, etc. NEVER report anything vaguely close to their real income, and Cost of Living calculations include basics such as food that are price controlled (it is still a Communist country after all). All of those BMWs and Audis aren't being bought on two dollars a day. The other BIG difference is that the average Chinese worker is extremely productive - both because of their work habits and hours, and more than that since most are employed in adding value to resources, thus creating wealth - both of which we are not very good at doing. Steep tarrifs on imports is EXACTLY what China has. Canada, unlike the US, doesn't have the balls to call them on it. Also, to block imports of things such as lead painted kids toys, products made well outside of any labour, environmental, technical standards, etc. (oh, we do on paper, we don't in reality). BUT: my real shot is at Canadian and American consumers who unquestionably will buy the poorest quality crap and eschew the usually much better domestic things (furniture a good example) to the extent we no longer HAVE those businesses here at all. Finally, to address what you and Michael have asked: the missing bit of infrastructure is the lack of business investment from Canadians. The money is here, but it goes into a good copy of the worst part of the US economy and goes directly to large finance, who use the money to speculate in the Casino Capitalist economy. Direct investment in business is almost non existant other than entrepreneurs themselves and big finance is only interest in big scam...er publicly funded enterprise - not run by entrepreneurs (the genuine engine of the economy).