cannuck

Well, since Quebec - fully 1/4 of the population of Canada - did not sign our "Constitution", it really doesn't have any force in law. That, IMHO, means we fall back to where we were in 1982, governed by the British North America Act. Yeah, pretty much a British Crown Colony. Maybe not in Maryland, but I can tell you that damn near EVERYONE in WY (where I have an office) owns not "a" gun, but several, and a large percentage are carrying (which is why we really don't have much of a crime problem). Spoils system? You really think that is not being done in the USA (and Canada, and Mexico)??? We are deeply involved in a rather large case in New York. I KNOW it is common.

I wish it was that simple. Diet and lifestyle will help considerably, no question at all, but nothing can make someone immune to cancer. Different people have different sensitivity to being affected, but you can't eat your way around your genes.

and some people wonder why the UK is pulling out!

Most indigenous "controlled burns" I have experienced have been done to relieve 90% unemployment on reserves (they get hired as fire fighters). Your point about monoculture is very appropriate. If we ever thought about actually becoming sustainable in our lifestyle, we would stop building homes from kindling wood. Such structures last only a century at best, if the termites, carpenter ants, rot or fire doesn't get them first. We could easily build permanent structures for residential use (one of my good friends in Morocco lives in a 600 year old home and walks on sidewalks laid before Christ was a baby) if we took our collective head out of our arse.

Uncle Vlad would hardly like to see the Yanks go away in a nuclear holocaust, as it would not be good for business. He needs a boogeyman to keep him looking like the strong man that his constituents worship so he can continue to rob the place blind. Canada is not likely 12% to be destroyed, but 12% likely to be temporarily disabled.

Yes, thanks to Klinton giving them reactors and a pass on complying with the no weapons clause

I live in Canada, but have business on both sides of the border. Sick care in the US can be extremely good - IF and ONLY IF you have a really good insurance plan or are so rich a few hundred grand is no big deal. In Canada, as you mention, nobody thinks twice about sick care, as you know with absolute certainty your costs (except transportation and in some cases drugs) are fully covered. In the US, very different. Obummercare has not solved much of the problem. When it comes to starting a business, this is a HUGE consideration in the US, whereas in Canada, it is a zero concern. NO medical system is perfect, since it can be very complex and depends a great deal on skills of the practitioner(s). We have some very good doctors up here, some centers of excellence and some forgotten backwaters (that require transportation - but that is the nature of being an extremely large country with very small population). The US has the same thing in greater extremes, but it has the massive barrier to entry of financial privilege. In general, we pay less than half as much as the US does for sick care, and we get far better results. The US can not understand that medicine is (or at least SHOULD be) a social service. It thinks everything can be and must be a business. Sadly, we copy some of that and pay the insurance costs to fund the US legal business that preys upon US people's medical needs.

I fear they will be very much as they are now. Would love to see taxpayers be able to take their child's share to a charter school or any other institution of their choice - but in fairness, just given to parents who will home school or use other methods. Teachers' unions have government right by the short and curlies.

No time to get a lot of detail, but it looks as if forest fires in Canada average 20-40% of our total emissions. Ft. Mac alone was over 10% at 700,000+ tonnes, but before that Indonesia forest fire spewed out over a billion tonnes.

Thanks for the kind comments. Always amazes me that discussing islamaphobia will suck up a quarter of a thousand pages of posts, but the key to the future of the country will only be of any import to a tiny minority. In lieu of parents, we have always had a great alternative - extended family. Something that is also a thing of the past. You can hire people to do a lot of things for you, but you can't buy love.

Bingo. Absolute bullseye.

Will try to answer in short form (stealing time from client right now). Many years ago, teachers were probably the best educated people in the community (especially true in rural Canada - and we were an ag society and economy until not that long ago). Their parents simply did not have the education to pass on. That is no longer the case. Who does it better? Well, better results come from the ultra-high pressures of Asian schools, but only the results of granting degrees. I am not convinced there is any better level of understanding or ability to reason and think through things. Changing education to actual learning, rather than simply tests of recall is a much larger problem, but we don't even do the basic tasks that well now. How to fix that? Simple: pay for results. Teachers' rewards should be a function of what INDEPENDENT testing and scoring produces from standardized tests. Today, there is no consequence for not teaching the course material, so only the small percentage of genuinely dedicated and motivated teachers will do so. Letting testing and grading happen in house would simply mean making sure everyone gets a passing grade of...oh...I would expect 99%. Since teachers can't fail students any more, that is essentially where we are now. As in industry, if you don't pay for merit and productivity, you don't get merit or productivity, so why would we pay teachers a guaranteed reward with no obligation to perform??? As I mentioned, those legislators and their bureaucrats are a product of a society that is totally screwed up, and reflect the same quite accurately. It's the Wall Street and WalMart world today - there is no longer any honour or respect for intellect, integrity or productivity. Greed is the new religion, and it is fed by a steady diet of ignorance.

Sadly, WalMart started out as a company that sold US made products, but when they discovered China and became exceedingly greedy, they go to China with buyers who beat the Chinese suppliers down to the lowest possible price - and of course quality is simply not an issue. Typically, you would have saved a LOT of money by buying a top value, top quality item that was domestic as you will replace the Chinese lowball junk 10x over. China Tire Corporation is no different. AND: as you are aware, each of those sales takes away another job on this continent. This is how China went from nothing to 2nd largest economy in the world in a few short decades. Take the jobs and then take the consumer's money. Then, they will come in and buy up the remains of our productive assets for pennies on the dollar.

Are you kidding!!!!! Trudeau still holds the record of increasing federal debt at over 700% https://www.taxpayer.com/media/CoverStory24-27WEB.pdf When he came to power we had a military force that was respected around the world. When he left it was nothing but an experiment in social engineering Fiscal irresponsibility beyond belief. SRTCs were the worst - one could "do research" and get far more money back in taxes than you spent on the so-called research (no doubt related to what you were kicking back to the Liberal party). The Governement of Canada went into the oil business!!! (PetroCan) and many, may others where they of course screwed up as only a bureaucrat under political control can possibly do. Most of all, discounting the hundreds of examples one can easily find, he jerked the politics of this country so far to the left, we have as yet to recover (and may never).

I have done work for OPG in the past. $45,000.00 would be more money than anyone there should earn for the level of total imcompetence I have witnessed.

Since the evidence is that we shit in our own nest, overpopulate beyond sustainability, breed indiscriminatley and spend our intelligent moments trying to figure out how to screw our fellow man out of resources or make weapons to kill them more efficiently (without eating the liberated protein and fats), I would ague that point.

You have to ask?????!!!!

As has been alluded in other posts: education in many countries is an extremely competitive thing. Here is where we really miss the point: just getting the accredation does not mean getting an education. Especially for Asian students, the value within most Eastern cultures is the result, so they will work very hard, lie, cheat and learn tricks to get the degree(s). It is so bad that many grad schools will see the millionth application from Chinese (in particular) students - all with perfect scores, perfect resumes and perfect references that will attest to their perfection when asked. Application goes straight to the round file and they miss the GENUINE rock stars in all of the noise. Our eldest left academia over here to teach pre-schoolers - as she encountered only students where were in her class to pass the exams - virtually NONE interested (or even able) to learn the science being taught. 3 and 4 year olds have no such learned inhibitions.

That deserves a quote as well as a like. I am not an educator, but my wife, her sister and our eldest daughter all are. They cover the range from infancy to post-secondary in their teaching experience and one (my wife) has degrees in early childhood and exceptional children. I will attempt to distill what I have learned from them. It is mostly an institutional and societal problem. Legislators for the most part get their view of the world through the senior bureaucrats in the departments from which their Ministers sit at the top for a very short time and try to understand the actual issues. The view from Parliament Hill/Legislature Drive/etc. is not very clear and not much partisanship surrounding the issues. Children start off life with an incredible capacity to learn. It is what parents do for their children in every waking moment. Societally, what we teach them is that Mom has to go to work to pay for "location, location, location" and all of the "stuff" we deem important. Kid is shuffled off to a paid babysitter so Mom and Dad can get off to work. WTF do you think the child care person is trained and experienced at doing for pre-schoolers???? Change diapers and keep them from killing each other is about the limit. There was a time when the family meant that the FAMILY raised children, and that meant one full time parent, or in exceptional circumstances, one of or a pair of grandparents would step in and lend a hand. Those first four and MOST IMPORTANT years are usually wasted now, but if you know anything about Grandparents, few are going to make the mistakes and bow to pressures as they did in their younger days and kids will get a pretty good amount of attention that fits the personality, ability and interests of the child in question. We don't live with/near our families these days, as it interferes with making money. I will post our experience: Our children were enrolled in just about anything you could imagine for educational and health reasons pre-school, and their Mother gave up her career to teach them what she could (that was quite a bit) in the hours in between. Their first classes at University started at the ages of 4 and 3 in a music programme (that required parental participation to the tune of many, many hours a week). Kids can swallow that intensity with far more ease than parents. When they hit school, don't care if it is public or private, if their interest in learning is still in tact, they are now thrown into an institutional situation largely designed by bureaucrats that has to manage millions of kids, 25 or so at a time, with a very, very wide diversity in ability and interests. Problem is: one teacher can only do so much in a system designed to cater to the lowest common denominator, when in fact, if you had a hope in hell of keeping up with what any one kid can learn, you pretty much need one-on-one instruction/support. Yup: daycare version #2. We have this ridiculous idea that you can just throw a kid into a box with two dozen others and a teacher can just wave his/her magic wand over them and turn them all into genii. Truth is, they almost ALL have that potential, but you need to be feeding it a lot more mental diet and challenge than the institutional setting can deliver. Again, I will post my experience: I thought that meant sending our kids to some kind of private or new-age school where some higher level of ability that public institutions could do wonders. I was more than a bit surprised when my wife insisted they would go to a public school - as the main thing they would learn was how to interact socially with their peers and teachers. There WAS some conditions placed: would be in French (we are Anglos) as the skills of language and music would be so important to their future scores and abilities in math and science (Who'd a thunkit???). It would also be a religious school (we are not religious, but prefer the general values of Christian institutions) and they would not be allowed to move ahead (they were academically years beyond the "grade level"). She and many other teacher/friends tell me that what is learned in school academically in a typical day can be delivered on-on-one in an hour or so - and THAT is what parental contribution can be (IMHO SHOULD be). By the time they are in secondary school, the die is long cast. The really bright kids are often academic superstars but absolute PITA for teachers - as they are bored silly with the snail pace of learning and non-existent challenges to their intellectual self. Note here: we DO have programmes in many public school systems for "actel" kids (academically talented) and the ones our kids used were genuinely beneficial to the development as students and people. And of course we have policies and programmes for those who are not up to the average. Problem is, the whole thing is aimed very low as the system is riding dwarf ponies. AND, it is us, the general tax-paying, voting public that cut the legs off. The idea that "the government" is supposed to be responsible for doing EVERYTHING for us is where the partisanship SHOULD come in, but there is nobody out there in the political world who seems to have the brains or balls to tackle this extremely important issue. We have conned ourselves as a society into believing the future of the country lies in having a bigger house, having more money, more "stuff". We have completely missed the fact that our future is our children, and we have abandoned our responsibilities as their parents to allow the state and contractors to step in and do what WE should be deeply involved with. Post secondary we have a new set of problems: EVERYONE is supposed to get some kind of post-secondary education these days, so what do we do? We just lower the standards so EVERYONE can be graduated. I could fill a book with stories of professionals in my field that do not have even the basic level of understanding of the science behind what we do. My children have told me endless instances in grad school and with post-docs with such narrow understanding of their own work that they are completely clueless as to the inter-disciplinary science behind even the most plebian of concepts. My own take is my view from the very technical side of things, where EEs dont understand MEs who don't understand CEs. Trades that don't understand EETs and EETs who don't understand PEs in same discipline!!!!! IMHO, EVERY technical discipline should have a format that takes EVERYONE through the trade level with same academic and practicum content. That leaves the path open to go into technologist's training and just add another stage of academic achievement. From there, professional graduation should START from the same path as trade and techs (EETs) did and simply add the last two years to reach baccelaureate level. From there to the MSc and PhD level, we have the process right as a continuum, but no place here to get back to the lowering of standards issue that dominates those last two steps!!! The failure of democracy is that we are not participating, not aware and don't seem to give a damn. So, why do you expect our teachers (product of same) and legislators (products of the same) to behave any differently??

He admired them because he was one of them. He was a dues-paying member of the Communist Party while studying in Europe, took "frequent walking trips" behind the iron curtain. The damage done to Canada by PET was huge, and his spawn is simply trying to finish us off. I can not believe that Canadians can be so ignorant of their history and culture. I would rather have seen "Tommy the Commie" Douglas as PM - as he was at least honest about his beliefs and intentions (even though he died as a member of a board of directors of Big Oil)

Legal system? It is a joke. Civil courts act as illegal collection agencies for banks and financial institutions. Criminal courts are tied up with conflict between law and political expedience. I believe the reason is that we are just too close to the USA and believe that the legal system should look more like theirs than our original UK model. Sick care? Same as above: we are far too close to the US, and have adopted much of the practices used down there for business of sick care to participate in the legal and insurance factors associated with delivery of service. More to the US-like worship of drugs as the absolute solution to everything. The Yanks thing sick care is a business, the rest of the world knows it is a social service, and we are caught somewhere in between - paying US costs for insurance, legal and drug habits. Aboriginals? IMHO very simple: if we agree that we owe them something as a country, then we should cut a cheque every month to each and every treaty number out there. They need to be Canadians in every sense of the word, not some idiotic fantasy of being hundreds of sovereign nations within one state. Why pay the people in question? If there is ever to be some kind of accountable government at the band level, let the leaders get their funding by taxing their constituents, just as does every other government in Canada. As it is, the vast majority of the bux are paid through the Feds to "preferred consultants" of the "Indian Industry" before being placed unaccountably into the hands of chief and council, where precious little of it is ever delivered as a service to the community or band members. When hear pure BS such as "WE" should be providing them with better housing and drinking water - the truth is we have paid far, far more out to accomplish exactly these things, but nobody is delivering anything other than racking up more and more personal fortunes in the middle. Most reserves out here have 90% unemployment - so given a massive workforce, far, far more than adequate financial resources why is it that there is nobody within each community building homes and utilities, maintaining homes and utilities and generally doing all of those things that EVERY other Canadian community does? Oh, yeah, I forgot the Liberal/liberal answer: "it's all Whitey's fault".

That is sad to hear. Thank you for posting. We have two daughters with a half dozen grad and post grad degrees in science between them, that gives me a great appreciation of how much extra a female must achieve in many disciplines to be recognized. My thoughts are with her friends, family and students.

You ASSUME that because homes have 200A service, the local utility is capable of providing everyone connected with their rated panel capacity. It is not, not even close. BUT it should be able to handle one car at 240V, x 40A (7.7 kW) for a 8-10 hour overnight charge. There are about 2 cars per household in North America, but I doubt very much you could pull 80A out of each one (but you would also not be charging every car fully every day). If you did, in the USA that would require 2,000 GW of power JUST for charging the cars - in a country that is pretty much maxed out with its 1,000 GW capacity - much of which is dedicated to 24 hr. base loads of big industrial users. Not sure of Canada's numbers, but they will be comparable. Don't know where you live, but if doing off-peak charging in Toronto 'burbs to do your several full charge commute with a plugin (only excuse for an EV IMHO) that is costing you about $0.80 an hour for power, or maybe $6.00 for a daily commute energy cost (double that in daytime). Not bad at all. That compares favourably with a VW 3 litre Lupo for energy costs - which is about as good as it gets. Dirty coal plants are NOT cleaner than new cars, but a nice clean nuke sure as hell is. Just try building one these days. I would seriously argue that electric cars in ANY way are "superior technologically", but if you were actually anywhere near the electrical business, you would realize that the batteries have relatively short lives, cost a fortune to make, have an environmental cost that is staggering in manufacture, and have to be replaced several times over the assumed million mile life of the vehicle. The chargers, inverters, VFDs, circuit protection devices, etc. all have finite lives and very high cost bother to manufacture an to repair, and the whole load of shyte weighs a lot more than an internal combustion engine, driveline and fuel system - compromising vehicle safety (and let's not even go there when it comes to batteries in collisions). I happen to also have an 18HP Kohler on a compressor. Has been doing its job since 1975 and is a very crude bit of kit. I would need 3 phase power to get enough electric motor to match the old lump (10 HP electric MIGHT do what it does) and a half mile extension cord. I also have a 5 horse compressor in my shop at home that is now on its 3rd electric motor over the last 40 years. 3:1 in favour of the Kohler in the real world. SHOULDN'T be that way, but that is how it has worked out for me. Just a little point of technical note: you assume that just because electric motors have the theoretical capacity for very high torque near zero RPM, the POWER produced is a function torque x RPM for ANY rotating shaft, doesn't matter what rotates it. You will notice that a 1200 RPM (6 pole) 5 HP motor is HUGE compared with an 1800 (4 pole) RPM one, and most little compressors use a tiny 5HP motor that must turn 3600 RPM (2 pole) to make that power. Further, NO electric motor of normal design is able to delivery that very high low RPM torque for more than an extremely short time without frying itself due to cooling issues (EXTREMELY high amperage under those conditions).

Having spent a considerable portion of my life in the transportation business, and with much of that overlapping energy businesses, I have to say that the end of internal combustion engines is a long way off. What navel gazers who believe we can wave a magic wand and just have plugin EVs getting a bunch of power pulled out of some unicorn's ass have no concept of the scale of infrastructure required to transmit and distribute power to charge all of those vehicles. Then, there is the further need for generating capacity. There is simply not that kind of flexibility and capacity available in North America, far, far less in Europe and don't even get me started on developing nations. Sadly, we have shifted our entire culture in the developed world to something far left of reason, and legislators, regulators and financial people (who actually run business now instead of the business people that SHOULD be doing so) have got on board this very, very leaky ship. Somewhere earlier in this thread, there was mention of how electric vehicles could have million mile lifespan. I actually HAVE some million + mile vehicles, and several with more than half that. ALL are diesels. Two things usually stop one of them: rusted out bodywork and failure of electrical and electronic components (which every EV also will require). We will see large fleets of EV cars and trucks the day we can see a fleet of plug-in Boeing jets doing international travel. Until then, the world will waste a staggering amount of time and money diddling around with really stupid concepts and ideologies. I will add: I believe there IS a place for plugin EVs in urban environments. That is not for any good reason, quite the opposite. We are spending all of this time and money to find alternative ways to do more of what is getting us into hot water, instead of taking a serious look at how we live and build cities to STOP doing the stupid things we do that piss away resources for no good reason at all.

That megalomaniac is truly a Joe Stalin wannabe, but the reward he seeks is not to further the cause of Marx and Engels, but to make more money for Uncle Vlad himself. The US is simply a business competitor to him, and he uses politics to inflict economic damage. Most of the stuff in Syria, for instance, is about blocking Qatari gas from going into a pipeline and straight to Europe, where he has a monopoly on compressed methane (LNG much more costly to move). The US gas market being in the toilet is another major threat to him, as US priced gas can make LNG very profitable for the US to export - and that include potentially to Europe. Same with what is going on in Venezuela: Russia is bailing out Maduro as it allows him to grab de facto control of PDVSA in the future. He is hardly allied with Maduro and Asad because he agrees with their politics. Russians respect on thing: strong man, and Putin knows that very, very well. A benefit of calling out and facing down Uncle Sam is simply preserving the control of the resource business that has made him probably THE most wealthy person on Earth. Putin will spar with the US, but he will not destroy it - since that brings down the economy of the world, hardly does him any good. It's all about the Golden Rule: He who has the gold, rules. Follow the money.