cannuck

You keep judging KSA by YOUR/our standards and beliefs. I guess you need to spend some time there to learn about the culture and understand its place within MENA and Islam. I can and have spent prolonged periods in cities and in the dessert with Saudis. When you DO, you will learn how very important manners are (and those manners are from THEIR viewpoint - not ours) and how incredibly stupid and insulting what Freeland did is seen to be in KSA. You seem to forget Freeland is not just another Canadian citizen, she is supposed to be Minister of Foreign Affairs. Her total lack of sensitivity and understanding of just about EVERYTHING foreign (and I strongly suspect, everything domestic) is typical of the quality of people chosen to surround the Drama Queen in Charge.

Yes, the GOVERNMENT of the Kingdom, and a significant part of the population consider themselves an ally of the West (now excluding Canada, of course). There are definitely Wahhabist fundamentalists who support terrorism in many forms and ways, but that is NOT the position of the Kingdom as an entity.

The President may have had a political objective, a DoD contractor has only a military and business objective - in that particular case, it requires one to be...well, OBJECTIVE.

We may not agree with how the Saudis do things at home, but by the same token, it is THEIR law and THEIR business. Anyone with a tiny bit of intelligence would know that the Saudis are a hugely important ally to the West in MENA and you simply hold your nose about some of the things they do to keep that relationship open and workable. Anyone who actually KNOWS anything about KSA also knows that some of the most security-critical contracts go to Canadian companies - as the DID trust us...until the advent of the Trudiots. One must also remember that Saudi nationals/citizens are not captives, they live in or leave a KINGDOM (not a democracy) where they get negative taxation and can live a very fine lifestyle by simply following the rules. Pretty much the same deal aboriginals get in Canada. This probably rates as the biggest diplomatic screw-up on the plant this year, maybe this decade.

That may have been an observation by Bush, but hardly revealing the behind-the-scenes conspiracy to define the case for war. I get to discuss this with one of my closest friends, a US DoD Prime Contractor and RMOA member. He is bluntly honest and candid, and has never indicated any such thing at all. One of my close friends is a US DoD Prime Contractor, and now member of RMOA. We have discussed Iraq at great length (as it has considerable implications to his business and some lawsuits filed against DoD). Any nonsense about "stabilizing oil price" has never come up. The Iraqi petro infrastructure was, and still is too disfunctional to have any significant impact on global crude markets.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/potlotek-chief-tired-of-waiting-for-government-to-fix-water-woes-irish-company-brewal-1.4293042 The Irish company that went to Potlek at their own expense demonstrated very simple, inexpensive technology and equipment that could reduce the iron and manganese to well within federal drinking water standards was shuffled aside. I assume that the bottom line is that they weren't using the "appropriate" engineering and consulting companies (i.e. not those who are...let's just say FRIENDLY....to the federal bureaucrats). Chief Marshall is probably going to go it on his own with the Irish guy(s). This is typical of reserves all across the country - and also true of a lot of small communities. While a reserve may SHOW 2 or 3 thousand members on treaty day, reality is that most of them do not actually live on reserve. Most are actually very small communities in very remote places (as with many dying Western farm towns) and the cost of full scale water treatment is way out of proportion to what we see in big cities. Problem is: few engineering companies know how to scale down the facilities - and one of the big roadblocks is they don't have particulate media filter beds that can backwash properly (which the Irish company DOES). We have encountered similar stories of completely ridiculous and seemingly incompetent behaviour by the feds in foreign locations. It's all about the providers being "on the bandwagon" that seems to be steered by government employees that, well, you know - just seem to be living a lot better lifestyle than their pay stubs suggest is possible. The Libs are masters at the scams of public money, but the Trudeau #2 bunch have literally no idea of the politics of the countries outside of Canada, nor for that matter, the politics and realities INSIDE of Canada. Just their own twisted politically correct, mindless agenda.

Not too stupid, too Liberal/liberal. Yeah, I guess you are right, same - same.

South Africa is simply reverting to being the same kind of country that is typical of almost ALL of sub-Saharan Africa. Tribalism, corruption and a flagrant disregard for property, life and liberty. Apartheid was one of the best things to ever happen to that place. The leftover whites are those whose families have been there for many generations and can't "go back" anywhere. They can seldom sell their land, and now may not be able to sell ANYTHING at all! https://qz.com/africa/1218309/south-africa-to-take-land-without-compensation-as-zimbabwe-backtracks-on-seizing-white-farms/ When the first whites got to Africa, they did not find any advanced culture with science, libraries, universities, representative government - just a bunch of savages killing each other off and taking each other's property. I am not being racist, I am being realist.

That is pretty much rhetorical. Obviously, Canadians ARE stupid - we elected Trudeau and his band of politically correct morons.

I think your tinfoil hat is a little tight today.

Uh....this is an internet political forum. It is all nothing but noise.

The one who in one of his few moments of clarity declined to send troops to Iraq. Same one who campaigned against free trade, then signed off on NAFTA once he got into office (his other brief moment of clarity and good governance).

I seem to remember an excellent decision by YOUR PM NOT to send troops to Iraq. Let's not confuse the politics North of 49 with those on the other side of the border. The politics of Iraq - and the whole of the Middle East are a lot more complicated than which tin pot dictator did the Yanks support. But, due to rabid sectarianism, to some extent Iraq DID bring So Damn Insain on themselves. On the "refugee" topic: I still think the drama queen in charge missed the ultimate opportunity by not housing all of them on reserves. After all, the crown already owns the land and it would give the "refugees" (actually "invitees" if we want to be precise) a true taste of what it means to be Canadian. It would also give our aboriginal population a true taste of what it means to be Liberal. BTW: I seem to remember somone's perfect definition of a socialist: someone who is glad to give you the shirt of his back - as long as it is not HIS shirt.

Let's get one thing perfectly straight: NO "sane" person intentionally kills another human being (with the exception of assisted suicide). The problem is trying to predict WHICH mentally ill person will do what things outside of our frame of ethical and moral standards. What is troubling is when any particular group, religion, organization, movement, government, etc. champions the cause of murder for their purposes. THIS is why people from the "right" point out the very open proclamations of fundamentalist Islam to kill infidels. I can not say whether exposure of the Danforth killer to radical Islam (which it seems he DID have) was "the" trigger that allowed his mental illness to express itself by murdering innocent strangers, but it is equally wrong to dismiss that as one possible contributing factor. One could follow this line of reasoning to understand how the greater the exposure to immoral behaviour, the more the bar of what is acceptable can be lowered. Honour killings in many cultures, and of course the Holocaust are perfectly good examples of WHY it is appropriate to call into question anyone or anything that promotes and gives credence to murder. The more it is expressed, the more it becomes a credible alternative to achieve some stated goal.

Our sick care system is not that far from workable. The idea of universal insurance is fine, but problem is too much of the population doesn't pay ANYTHING for tax to support sick care. In the rest of the old G7 nations, except the US, private delivery lives side by side with public delivery, as does public payment for private service alongside of unrestricted access to private service on your own nickel. Even in the US, something over half of the total population is covered by medicare, medicaid, VA or government employment sick care benefits. Where the problem comes is how practice medicine. It is for the most part a rather ignorant practice of trying to drug everyone to death. I refer to it as sick care, since there is little money there for anyone until you are ill or injured, at which time everyone conspires to drug the shit out of you. The other thing they are busy doing (especially in the US) is administering piles of excessive testing and treatment as a prophylactic to potential liability. I estimate over half of US medical costs are due to lawyers and insurance companies milking the system for hundreds of billions a year. We do some of that, because we are too close to them. What we do a little bit is health care. There is little better than the Canada Food Guide at providing a trusted and accurate source of basic nutritional information. We need to do a lot more nutritional and lifestyle education. I would like to see some of this funded by fat tax - let's put the costs directly on those foods and people who create much of the cost. Most of all, spend the effort and bux to keep people OUT of the sick care system - where they become REALLY expensive. Realistically, all Ford can do is help to steer the whole boat in a smarter direction by at best a few degrees.

It is one thing to make a fuss over funding Catholic schools, but it really makes me think of the whole business of funding unionized monopolies on education. THAT is really far more offensive to me, and far more dangerous at giving children an extremely biased view of the world. Most kids can figure out that the religion stuff is total BS, but the left-leaning version and agenda of education-by-trade-union is a bit more subtle.

Thanks for an informative post. I salute your choice.

We DO "take care of the domestic market". At least in some regions, Canadian refineries are a major source for US as well as domestic markets (for instance, Irving is HUGE exporter to New England areas). Ontario has Sarnia with no US equivalent just across the border (yet, one being built in Michigan - first in US since 1976). If government of any kind want to do something positive, it would be to block shipments of dilbit and require that only synthetic crude be exported. But, Ottawa is too busy looking for more terrorists to immigrate to bother with energy issues and our future.

Which is exactly what Trump in his heavy-handed way is trying to cure. The US has mostly WalMart greater jobs because WalMart is full of Chinese product. Nobody else in the Uniparty has done diddly squat about that for many administrations. Instead, they have concentrated their efforts on giving free reign to Casino Capitalists to redistribute wealth from speculative gain - leaving Main Street unfunded and unemployed. ALL wealth is created on Main Street, not Wall Street - and Main Street Beijing is busy filling that need.

In the early days of the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation it was thought that taking a good look at Quebec under transfer payment terms would be good for business. Reality was (then) that they did not really receive out of proportion at all. It got fairly complicated, but once it was examined as to how much federal SPENDING landed in PQ, the truth finally revealed itself. The handouts were (and I imagine still are) staggering. Before and since, working in several countries, I learned that pretty much the primary directive for every government department is to steer as much potential business to Quebec as possible. This means literally plucking opportunities identified and developed by the ROC and sticking them without bid into la Belle Province. I was so bothered by that, at one point I took the Minister of Everything (McKnight at the time) aside and started to tell him what I had seen in many countries. He simply informed me in a manner-of-fact way "what do you think we HAVE all of those people for? It is to pander to Quebec" (paraphrasing). That was the day I realized that partisan politics is not the solution to our problems, it is the cause.

Taxme: Sorry to have missed your post - have been out of the country all summer - great topic though. Augie: More than just the non-taxpaying part of the population, we live in such a wealthy country that more or less tax just means more or less of the good life for some, but not financial ruin for the rest. BUT: the really big factor is allowing government to spend today, but make a different government, and even a different generation pay the bills. On the revenue side, we can easily fix this by simply eliminating deficit spending. Once governments are forced to be accountable for THEIR spending, things will change appropriately. Add to that, the elimination of partisanship and rule-by-special interest. Not only should ever vote be free, but every bill should be subject to very public scrutiny and comment (by electronic plebiscite) from the public. One thing I have seen that is so important is to eliminate what government does now 99% of the time - dispensing special privilege. When it comes to spending, either EVERY Canadian should be eligible for each and every benefit, or none. Worked extremely well in New Zealand under Douglas. The size and cost of our bureaucracy is way beyond reason and totally out of control. As has been said, much of what government does it has no business in doing. It should stick to the simple tasks or legislating, regulating and enforcing - and only that at the will and with the comment and direction of the taxpayer. Finally: the tax bill that should fluctuate and balance the budget (along with mandatory debt retirement) would be GST and PST - so EVERYONE feels the stupidity and largess of the current governments. Works for municipal governments now.

The way to make consultative plebiscites work is to constantly publish the results and display when anything regarding specific legislation or election time was at hand. BTW: Legislators do NOT draft legislation. There are lawyers employed for that specific purpose (part of the problem with why the law is so obtuse).

I don't agree with ANY discriminatory use of public facilities, unless the user is paying the full cost of the facility to do so.

If I remember, the question is about closing a PUBLIC swimming pool to a group who wishes to discriminate against taxpayers to suit their religious belief. Since Canada is SUPPOSED to be some kind of "free" country, it is clearly inflicting a religious doctrine on someone in public, and that SHOULD be clearly illegal. The freedom to rent or own a PRIVATE facility that is exclusive should be the sole solution. On the other hand, any public interference in a PRIVATE organization such as a "men's club" should similarly be completely off bounds - but it is not. Just shows how the agenda of the politically correct left has become codified to the extent of removing the basic freedoms that this country is ASSUMED to have had.