cannuck

First of all, only productive people pay for sick care in the US. Between Medicare, Medicaid and government employment, a significant percentage of the population enjoys sick care at the cost of taxpayers. What we have in Canada is a sick system where everyone has medical insurance (most hidden cost by tax but in some cases with a monthly premium) provided by each province. There is a wide array of service delivery that is 100% government funded, some 100% government delivered, some delivered by private contractors to the state sick care plan and others that are "out of scope" and must be paid by the patient...IF it is allowed (some services are restricted to government delivery). Within the former G7, only Canada and the US stand out at the two opposite extremes. All of the rest have some version of government insurance, but an unrestricted mix of private and/or public service delivery.

Humans ARE nature. Whatever we do is "natural" in every sense. We as a species are going to use up all of the petroleum resources on Earth, so it would be foolish for Canadians not to share in the process. Too bad nobody has the stones to simply shut the valves off and let BC find out just how much they count on these nasty hydrocarbons in their everyday life.

Yeah, I forgot der Meisterklasse.

The solutions are many, but I always think back to the time Erik Nilesen was Minister of some-damned-thing. One of his first priorities was to write a white paper on how much money we spend on the administration of the Federal Government. He found departments with big budgets and no employees (but the money got spent) and departments with little to actually DO, but big budgets, big staffs, etc. That was the biggest spike in his political coffin. I have maintained for decades that that first question one should ask when negotiating with public servants is not "what more can you do with more money" but "why should you and your department even exist?" A wholesale house cleaning is needed, and government should be restricted to governing - regulate and enforce, not try to be a social and economic entity.

Yes, there IS a solution (one which no politician will ever endorse): eliminate partisanship by eliminating political parties. Subject every elected representative to recall. Increase direct democracy by having electronic voting on key issues. Allow voters to petition for a mandate/plebiscite on any (controversial or other) issue. Stagger terms so there is no national or provincial campaign, only local efforts to select a representative within a constituency (365 reps, 4 year term, one constituency runs an election every four days). Make lobbying exceedingly illegal (BIG jail term and fines). Cabinet elected from parliament, "leader" has only one year as PM before subject to affirmation by cabinet, parliament and people. Government needs to be in the business of governing, regulating and enforcing - and answering to the people. It is now primarily busy dispensing privilege in a partisan system of rule-by-special-interest.

"creating employment" is in no way productive. We could employ 100% of the workforce (USSR did just that for decades) but if what they are doing is not A) adding value to a resource or delivering a service in support, they create no wealth. Someone has to actually work to make an economy sustainable. Merely being employed does not meet that standard nor does this ":benefit all". I am glad to see you figured out who the "nitwit up here" is.

golf courses, resorts and casinos are not productive enterprises (although the US does benefit when non-nationals visit and spend money in them). Hotels CAN be part of the productive economy, when people stay there for the purpose of supporting productive business (which IIRC includes nothing Trump has ever done). Don't get me started on the nitwit piddling away my grandchildren's money up here.

I was being polite (Canadian, eh?) and not mentioning that.

Europe has slipped a long way down the rabbit hole with their immigration policies and patterns, but sadly we don't even bother with the pretense of seeking immigrants who could contribute positively to Canada's future, but seem to embrace mostly those who will foment the greatest social and criminal unrest.

It is not the American President's job to do great things for Canada. But, since Trump has never been productive, he will do little to solve the problem of how the economy works. Investment has to be shifted from speculative gain (nothing but re-distribution of wealth) to productive endeavours (adding value to resources, or servicing such activities thus creating wealth) before the whole thing will stop circling around the drain. By the same token, his job should not be to great things for Wall Street at the expense of Main Street and taxpayers.

Klinton sold out the taxpayers and Main Street big time by signing off Glass Steagall. Wall Street had already broken or subverted almost every provision of the Act, but when Goldman Sucks' Secretary of Treasury Rubin convinced him to go along with its replacement, he gave the green flag to speculators to shift the Casino Capitalist economy into high gear, defunding Main Street and setting up the "too big to fail" scenario where greedy banks/finance companies would be rewarded for their treachery by being bailed out by the public, instead of going TU as they should have. To be fair: Goldman has run the show for almost 80 years, and the Uniparty has been complicit 100%

First of all, there IS a tribe binding spirituality today = greed. Secondly: globalism is a liberal philosophy, not from the right.

That is not quite so simple. World oil demand is world oil demand, and it will be met one way or another. The idea that we can simply produce less oil from the sands and be somehow improving global emissions is naive at best. Yes, the methods of producing ANY heavy or extra-heavy crude emit more CO2 than does tapping a light oil reservoir (that is, unless the methane is vented causing much worse greenhouse contribution or if the methane is flared resulting in CO2 - and yes, these things are still done outside of North America) but since we continue to demand fuel and petrochemicals, these things will be produced, period. What is important is for Canada to be able to benefit from this resouce while it is marketable - and it will be for quite some time in the future. Reality is, if you want to do anything about carbon emissions, the answer is to go after the demand, not the supply. Big Oil is an easy target for the media and special interest groups, but it is our own (and their own) wasteful behaviour that drives demand. But, just like every other social(ist) concept, it is always the standard to blame those who meet our demands, never to look in the mirror and realize we ARE the demand/problem. Of course, 7-8 billion people living on a nice 1-2 billion planet is an ever larger part of the problem (and many other problems as well). Open the subject of reducing population if you REALLY want to see how stupid we can get.

No, that time is past. I thought they would go out and convert the existing (thousands) coal fired plants to gas fired, but they will simply build new gas fired thermal plants to replace coal plants (as I understand it: more distributed generation). China bought leading edge sub-critical mass technology from its South African developers years ago (surprised they didn't just steal it!!!) and the intent for that, as with gas/thermal now is for distributed generation, so we are talking very small nukes that will tuck into neighbourhoods (sub gigawatt?). You have to be there a very long time to understand China: once they make their (central planning) mind up, they will then go full speed ahead into implementation at a rate no other country could imagine. That is how you take your economy from stone age to #2 in the world in a couple of decades. AND, environmental protection is now squarely in their sights. ALL developing economies got there by exploiting their resources and environment, China no different from US, Canada, Yurp, etc.

I am not a Candu fan, as they are ancient technology. However, in Canada, we have done a lot of work with thorium fuels, but sadly, the whole business of reactors is now in the hands of an engineering company that I simply do not respect or trust (SNC Lavalin - got to where they are mostly by patronage and bribery). Give me a subcritical mass reactor, and I will glandly live next door. Do you know what the most likely highest source of exposure to radiation a typical Canadian nuclear worker has? Sleeping with spouse. I think dairy products run a close second. I get to work in nuclear facilities once in a while, and the last thing I worry about is radiation exposure.

I refer to Trump as such since he has not earned money from creating wealth, but by speculative gain. Yes, has had been a builder at one time, but office towers, casinos, golf courses - those are part of the problem, not the solution. I have no respect for anyone who lives off of the backs of others' productive work. Applying that same standard to Obama and Klintons, they are a lot lower on the totem pole since none of them has ever done a useful, productive thing in their life. And, as you point out, one of the above doubled the debt of the nation without accomplishing diddly squat except continuing reward of the ultimate scammers on Wall Street for their treachery.

President Trump, although he may indeed be an asshole, is the first person in a VERY long time to stand up for the US and try to return its economy to sustainability. President Obama, the "educated gentleman" cost the American taxpayer more than every previous President and war combined.

We could all live off of the land, in caves, teepees, etc...IF we didn't have 7 or so billion people around here. Those days have gone, and I don't think ANYONE laments that. However, if you think that is a good idea, the vast majority of Canada is virtually uninhabited, and you can go out into the bush and build a squatters cabin and do just that. AND, you can drink right from the river. So if it is such a good thing, why don't you (or any but a tiny handfull of Canadians) do just that? BUT: just remind me - what fantastic innovations the have made the world a better place came from one of our First Nations? Please show me the immense libraries of knowledge that they had from their way of life.

carbon is atomic, molecular structures are carbon compounds. There are an infinite number of carbon compounds formed from degradation of hydrocarbons, but CO and CO2 represent the primary method of moving carbon through the carbon cycle back into biological forms - by once more becoming hydrocarbons. The atmosphere is one path, and the ocean is by far the largest carbon sink, I believe followed by flora. "burning" of fossil fuels is about as natural as any other rapid oxidation, nothing "artificial" about it.

Emphatically NOT. Quebecois is an extremely crude dialect. I am forever grateful that at least in SK, children learn proper Parisienne French. They can integrate seemlessly in France.

The only major Chinese investment I can recall in the Alberta Oil Sands was CNOOC's purchase of Nexen. They had earned a war chest of $15Bn that either got spent in acquisitions by their NYSE company or it would go back to CNOOC in China - never to be seen by CNOOC USA again. They regretted that decision ever since, but it was also a major coup for them, as they were rebuffed by the US government when they tried to buy a large oil company there many years before. Since there was well over $100Bn of projects going on when the bought Nexen, they were obviously a long way from being the biggest player in that sandbox.

quite aware and a very good point. However, we live in a short term carbon society as much as we live on a long term carbon based planet. The trick is to manage the real risks associated with technology - and in the case of transporting hydrocarbons, pipelines are by far the lowest risk method. Had Alberta the stones and shut the oil and gas off at its Western border, it would be about one week before all of BC would be rioting for it to be turned back on. Just as with the sewage nonsense, BC politics is driven by posturing and ignorance, not logic and reason.

The legacy of both Trudeaus (and pretty much everyone else in between that inherited Communist Daddy's mess) is wasting the time and life of our grandchildren and beyond. It is they who will inherit a crumbling country burdened with staggering debt, hostile climate to business, unworkable 600 nations within one nation structure and an immigrant population that nobody else would take. "Just Society"? Yeah, that's all that will be left, just society.

First of all, please let me congratulate the forum on the lack of partisan bickering and balance of sound arguments and information in this thread. Sorry not to have been able to participate much - but deep in a cycle of capitalist pig panics and projects last while. I have been asked a number of times why I am so skeptical of "climate scientists" while I claim to be so trusting and believing in science in general. Yes, carbon in the atmosphere IS a big deal, and much of what we do DOES contribute to it, but I can not agree with the DEGREE of anthropomorphic contribution. Rather than quoting published "stuff" (you can find just about anything you want to support your point) I instead think of all of that limestone that I encounter in the crust of Mother Earth. How the Hell do you think it GOT there? Yup, it,s carbon was all at one time in our atmosphere. The evolution of the planet has seen some HUGE swings in CO2 levels, and any idea that we can somehow stop or even greatly influence it is IMHO exceedingly naive. BTW: methane is a far more significant greenhouse gas, and if you ever considered the amount of natural methane seeps over time, you would appreciate that even all of the cows can not fart out enough to really put a dent in those numbers. The big methane risk is thawing of nodules as sea temperatures rise. Also it seems that the atmospheric CO2 numbers rise AFTER ocean temps (as that is by far the greatest repository of CO2), not before. Then, there is the energy from our relative position with the galaxy (now changing to less input from that source.) There are some extremely large non-anthro factors at play, some seldom or never considered in models.

A few comments: BC really is not a place where logic prevails. It does things based on emotion, media influence, social attitudes and I guess out of profound respect for its drug culture. It is, however, an accurate portrayal of what is wrong with Canada. We tend to be Quebecers, maritimers, Albertans, etc. If there's anything we should learn from the US it is how to be proud of our province, but far more proud of our country. If we could only learn the basics - such as absolute prohibition of restrictions on interprovincial trade and business we would be on the track - and THAT is why the idea of a province intefering with transportation of a critical resource from another is simply wrong. The science and technology - as well as the regulatory regime concerning ships, loading terminals, pipeline and pumping station environmental protection is extremely high and able to manage the risks very well these days. Now, to be fair: I do NOT support shipping dilbit in pipelines, rail cars, ships or whatever. IMHO, for a dozen good reasons, we should limit transport and export to synthetic crude. Saying we can't predict the weather from one minute to the next would be very unfair and untrue. Yes, the atmosphere (and especially its interaction with both terrestial extra terrestial energy sources) is an extremely large and not yet well understood. BUT: there is no reason not to continue to learn and develop the models - and that means we have to unfortunately give at least some credence to what I personally believe is way off track - and that is the magnitude of anthropomorphic contributions. Our ability to at least give a reasonable level of forecast of surface weather has improved dramatically over the last half century. Anyone who has depended upon aviation forecasting to stay alive in the cockpit can tell you as much. The answer to almost every sustainability question IMHO always comes back to one primary problem - that we are NOT dealing with at all - population.