cannuck

Really? Obviously, you have no exposure to aboriginal entities and tribes other than what you get from the media. https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100020616/1100100020653 And,speaking as someone who has been around the issue for a very long time: a LOT of Canadians really are sick to death not only of hearing about the aboriginal crap, but PAYING for it. There is simply no workable way to have 300 "sovereign nations" within one country. The whole notion is idiotic.

Yes, Sir Rog from Kiwi country. You are right, though: we could not pull off what he did, as we have a Federal government that defers much of the state level stuff to the provinces, but one province of course exceeds even the Federal powers and privileges of the 617 First Nations communities that might as well be their own cit-states. I can see flat tax...but only after a GIA type of payment to relieve the bottom end, and eliminate most of the bureaucracies that exist to grant the privilege to dip into the taxpayers' back pocket. Further to that, I feel that a punitive tax on capital gains needs to be "progressive" to the extent of being 99% on day one, 95% first year, and tapering off to the flat rate over 10 or more years. You hit the US thing right on the head. Not that we should pull back from a market that size that is right on our doorstep and speaks the same language, but we should be focusing most of our efforts on developing new markets for value added products, instead of hewing more wood and drawing more water.

It spews nothing but BS and its residents gas off constantly something that stinks. What else could one call it? While I could get behind CD and she would be far, far better than JT/B, I would still like to see leadership from someone who has accomplished something and produced something significant (though one could argue that CD's recordings are indeed something significant). Need to have solved problems creatively to bring perspective to the office - and, no, deciding what suit/dress to wear and how to stage a selfie are not what I would consider significant problems. Just for frame of reference: one of my political heroes is/was Sir Roger Douglas.

Languages in SK in order of magnitude: English, GERMAN, Ukranian, French then I think cree. But Scheer is not really an SK native - a lot of time in the butthole of the country (Ottawa). What worries me is that he has no experience actually DOING anything except politics. Now, that beats the hell out of getting a drama queen...er...teacher, but not sure by how much. Thiefenbaker was from SK, all right, but being nothing but an ambulance chaser, not much to be proud of.

No, the US is not the center of my business universe, it is simply one place where we have a few companies. Hate to burst your bubble, but I am not in business to earn street creds on the internet. BTW: I keep one business going, in spite of heavy losses - simply because our employees would lose their sick care coverage if we were to shut it down. It is not exactly the place to be on Main Street these days.

Jon the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation. You really do not want a "taxpayer's party" as it can only be effective if it wins. NGO can scream at and expose stupidity regardless of WHO is in power - and sway a lot of votes.

Have to burst a few bubbles on how ALL government spending is done (or variations of this example) There will be a "consultant" somewhere in the mix, we find usually at 10%. He will submit some paperwork, but most will ask what is he real function and why is he worth so much? He will be from a third country, where neither the donor/buyer country or beneficiary/selling country has an legal status. His real job is to open or simply deposit to existing offshore bank accounts, trusts or some other entity to which the bureaucrats negotiating the deal (from both side) will have access but not traceable ownership. Decisions are indeed made upon who makes the best deal...for the bureaucrats. In fairness, this is usually NOT done at the political level, but it certainly has and does happen.

No, actual medical maryjane is extremely effective in managing certain kinds of pain. It is non-addictive - unlike many options. But, as I mentioned it is NOT BC bud passed over the counter by a pothead, it is very specific cultivars with other active ingredients that INCLUDE THC, but are carefully selected for specific narcotic psy phsychoactive properties. As another poster mentioned, the free-market "Medical Marijuana Clinics" on every street corner are simply pushing drugs for money.

Uh....you're kidding, right? 2000 amps @ 600V would require 2 runs of 1000 MCM - and you won't bend that. You can't just bundle a bunch of single 0 gauge wire into one big cable and get the same rated amperage, as the cooling issue reduce the amperage considerably (thus why there is larger cable). What you are missing is that this is for ONE charging station. Go price out a 1MVA transformer, a 2000 amp rectifier, the switch gear, protection, etc. and you are looking at more than a hundred grand for ONE charging station! Also, where are you going to GET the power that the SINGLE charging station needs, never mind the dozens in a typical service island and the thousands required for even a modest sized city? Typical commercial buildings use no more than a couple hundred amps at 600VAC, you are now talking about industrial level stuff that is staggering expensive. If you were to take ALL of the excess capacity of the service entrance to a large gas station, you would have maybe 0.1MW available - or one at a time, 60 minute charges. I won't open the incredibly complex subject of rectifiers, peak voltage (that is useless in DC considerations) and effective voltage, but you are not going to carry that on board of a little car without it becoming a much larger and heavier car. an earlier comment about no longer waiting for the lethargic gas pump to fill the car is laughable compared with reality for an electric charge in the real world. Also, the comment about the rain: you are going to have consumers handling 600V equipment IN THE RAIN!!! AND, minimum wage pump jockies working around 25KV drops and transformers??? Geez, liability ambulance chasers will start order new Maybachs if that were to happen. Let me put this into perspective: I have been involved in converting natural gas pipeline pumps from combustion (old little jet engines) to electric. This is about the same load a lineup of 1MW charging Teslas would use during busy times at a charging station. 20 years ago, that was over a $30MILLION bill for the transformer and rectifiers - and that assumes you already have a 230,000 volt substation, switch gear, protection, etc. already in place. And you think we can just add THOUSANDS of such facilities to the grid and do what? get "sunny days" to smile on a bunch of unicorn farts to power it?

The EV thing IS practical for commuting - and with more and more people moving to asshole factories (er...I'm sorry, CITIES) I suppose they will have a place. BUT: for the kind of dispatch flexibility that people who actually do the work the creates the wealth that pays for the commuters to go back and fourth producing nothing but smog, they are not likely ever to be practical. The biggest problem is that we spend endless amounts of effort to find a better way to do things that we really shouldn't do in the first place. Living in Peterborough and working in Hogtown is one. Doing jobs that don't have to be done is another. IF we insist on the nonsense of building more of these pointless commuters and commuting, we need to come face to face with reality. To facilitate fast charging, we are talking about high voltage to keep the amperage down (thus conductor size manageable). Problem is, using something as common as 4160V, 250A pin and sleeve connectors (easy) means you are needing power transformers at the charging site to know down the 25KV local distribution voltage to the charging voltage. SOMEWHERE in the system you need to drop the charging voltage down to battery voltage (lets say 480, as IIRC that is used in some EVs). Well, you need ANOTHER transformer, and as well a rectifier to make it into DC. As we have already established, the conductor to do so at 500V is far too large to be practical, so that means having all of this extremely heavy garbage ON BOARD the car. It is fine to have a sub station on board of a railroad locomotive to do this, but bloody foolish to incorporate into a personal transport vehicle. The list of this kind of crap just goes on and on. The problem here is that you have tree hugging morons wanting this kind of stuff with so little understanding of the world outside of naval gazing and internet surfing that they don't realize what they are saying.

It is just not as simple as blame the teachers, blame the students, or coiuntry A is doing better than country B. My wife is a teacher with degrees in exceptional education, and I have learned by watching with absolute fascination. I also have worked in several countries and have close friends with families in Asia. You need to understand the cultures involved to appreciate you can't just make direct comparisons. First, in the Asian culture, it is all about results. How you get them is secondary. It may be from hard work, or it may simply be simply by cheating. As long as you accomplish the stated goal, you have lived up to the societal/parental/cultural/peer group demand. One of the problems grad schools all over this continent have is encountering EVERY applicant from China and many from India with perfect marks, perfect references, perfect EVERYTHING - which is, of course, impossible. As a result, the status of zero credibility means truly capable and deserving students are often passed over or not even given a shot. Another issue is the whole business of measuring intellectual capacity. Scoring at some kind of testing is one thing, UNDERSTANDING the subject matter is a whole different ballgame. In many cases, Asian students who may accel at the art of taking tests come very short of mastering the subject (have seen this all of the way through the post-doc level). Part of it is due to coming from a culture that uses a contextual language. When a word or sentence can mean one thing today and something completely different tomorrow, the exactness required of math and science is just not a good fit. Our language and culture, due to good fortune, is far more suitable to achieve such precision and consistency of fact. It just happens that the simplicity that academia tries to find in measuring learning is not very accurate when trying to plumb the depths of understanding - that not even our more flexible language can account for. We have a pair of science geeks for kids. They didn't get there by accident. They started by having a full time teacher who understood early childhood and gave a full effort 24x7 for over 20 years to get them there. We chose public education for their day schools, as the social skills are critical. It just so happens that even the ordinary Canadian (OK - SK at least) system will accommodate bright children. They probably spent more time learning outside of their public classroom (they started in music - VERY beneficial to science and math - at 3 and 4) and were sent to other schools for math and sciences when in primary school, as well as actel classes. I can not say they had an endless stream of phenom teachers, but they had a Mother who WAS just that, and at least one exceptionally good teacher everywhere they went - INCLUDING the public system. There is simply no way you can fully satisfy a child's curiosity and ability to learn - but you CAN kill it off by complacency over time. It is completely unreasonable to expect to simply give you children to strangers at school and expect them to return to you 13 years later a budding genius. The part that is missing in our culture, you have to provide as parents - and if you do, the resources are available here to make it happen. I always find it strange that people completely understand the effort and dedication of parents who will go to the end of the world to try (or succeed) in making their kid a hockey star or olympic skater, but are miffed by parents who spend easily as much time, effort and MONEY to give their kids a decent science education.

I am not a pothead, rarely use prescription drugs and never OTC, so take this as an observation from arm's length. From what I have seen, medical marijuana is carefully cultivated and processed to employ very specific varieties and strains containing OTHER active ingredients besides THC, and is seldom prescribed to be smoked. You don't go down to the local head shop and have the stoner behind the counter just stuff some weed into you mit and toke on it. I will just leave it that I agree strongly with posts from Rue and Hyrdaboss on this subject

I agree very much with the concept of GAI, as long as it totally replaces EI, welfare, child care, etc. programmes. that would mean federal, not provincial, I would need to see flat income tax, with GAI for EVERONE being the floor of basic personal exemption and no avoidance of tax on every dollar earned above that. I also agree with those who point out the ON libs do not have the administrative ability to do this,

I think you missed one important point: I LIVE outside of the US, but I do business there and have responsibility for a lot of assets there. Got to sprint and do some more of that capitalist pig stuff. Later.

If you really prefer reality, look a lot further than the talking notes from the uniparty. Open you mind to what your government (and others) are DOING, and why. For reference see the preceding paragraph.

I fear exactly that: you DO represent reality very accurately. All I ask is that you open your mind and see what is actually going on around you.

Sinking to their level does nothing for your cause or credibility. Yes, the US Fed, the greenback and policies matter a great deal to me. I am a Canadian citizen and resident by choice, but the vast majority of my business is located in the US, or based there and operating in Europe, Asia and South America. It is also done almost exclusively in USD. This is the case for just about anyone who does business internationally.

China will some day wipe the greenback out of first place. The Euro might have done so, but did it ever occur to you that the same people who own the Fed are those who lent seemingly generously and recklessly to the PIIGS? Could they have intentionally trashed the Euro that threatened their free ride on the backs of the world? Naaaahhhhh, banksters are nice guys, they would never do anything like that. BTW: I've got both my WY ocean front property and my bridge in Brooklyn up for sale if you agree with that. Why is it every time you know you are hooped, or don't know of what you write, you mount a frontal attack on something Canadian that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the subject under discussion?

The "demand" for USD does NOT represent wealth created (imagine how balance sheet looks) it is now only coming from the need to move dollars into Wall Street pockets for literally nothing (but treachery). If you put a bunch of numbers on one side of your balance sheet, without producing any value on the other, it would force an accounting system to change the value of the markers in that column to balance to the real assets. Unlike GAAP rules, forex is a very different animal, and as long as the Greenback enjoys de facto hegemony, every other central bank in the world must rush in and buy when the funny money increase in M1 is printed - otherwise their dollar denominated holdings get trashed. That free ride exists because the member banks own both the Fed and every successive administration, and they can play this game, and bury the resulting inflation in the protection by other central banks in the greenback. When the movement to replace the USD in that capacity gains enough traction, the US taxpayer is hooped, because THAT is who is on the hook for the trillions that the banksters have stuffed into their jeans. That 2% inflation is based on CPI, not Forex. As I just explained, that correction is a pent up force, not one that has been expressed. Government is not the only thing moving wealth around - the transition of the US economy from a capitalist economy that funds business to create wealth to the casino capitalist economy that merely accommodates wealth re-distribution through speculative gain. In ANY speculative transaction, there must be a matching loser for ever winner, thus a zero sum game for the suckers who play at the tables. The big loser is Main Street, that can not hope to compete with dividends from real business against the funny money at the casinos who own the fed. The responsibility of Government SHOULD be to make rules and enforce them that assures that wealth is created within the economy, and redistributed for SOCIAL policies (such as sick care, health care, welfare, defense and infrastructure). Instead, the actual rulers of the country - Goldman SUCKS - has the government busy codifying privilege for the speculators to redistribute strictly to satiate the greed. Geez, even Bernie could figure that one out.

Well, it was at one time about the business of creating wealth and making money. Today it is all about re-distributing wealth and just printing money to cover the demand for dollars. THAT, BTW, is the failing of QE. Every penny spent on this is an inflationary pressure on the greenback - ON TOP of the clearly visible end result that as of two terms of total stupidity, the federal debt increased by the same amount as every other president, administration, war, depression, etc. racked up. Taxpayer gets the bill, Wall Street gets 100% of the benefit, Main Street gets screwed up of investment.

I have to start this thread by apologizing for being absent for most of the next two weeks. I will be travelling internationally and no idea what I will have for access. Ever since Trump got elected, I have been wondering when the softwood lumber issue hits the fan. American lobbyists have challenged this under NAFTA seemingly forever, and every dispute resolution panel finds that softwood lumber (leases on crown land sold by public auction - I believe exactly how the BLM deals with resource leasing in the USA) is NOT subsidized at all. This is exactly the kind of problem I expected from the Trump administration. The parallels with the show "Yes, Minister" are all too familiar. Dairy, I'm OK with. Supply management is a crock of socialist intervention in free markets (I was deeply involved with dumping the Canadian Wheat Board, so you can appreciate my abhorrance of of such things). So, Yanks, help us out here and clobber that policy and bring your buddies up here into the real world. Energy: we will just have to wait and see what protectionist crap The Donald spews on that topic. The majority of energy sector investment up here comes from the US. Similarly, if we were to, say "cut the cord" from Hydro Quebec and Manitoba Hydro, vast areas of the USA would be perfectly dark - for a few seconds - followed by the whole grid coming down. But softwood lumber???? Geez, give it a rest and deal with REAL problems. Is this an effort to sacrifice Canada to get China on board to whack North Korea? One thing I can guarantee you: the pothead-loving child currently residing at 24 Sussex will be totally ineffective in dealing with this.

For one: extrapolation of models from data that is questionable. Methodology is only part of it. The question is how does the agenda of the author affect what is presented vs. what is conveniently ignored? It is not only a problem in science, it is a much larger problem in criminal investigations. As I stated, the human condition is to be very weak on the discipline of objectivity and honesty, and scientists are pretty much as human as cops, teachers, politicians, etc. Two of the scientists in my family are very good at science, and far more than average in objectivity. I could cite hundreds of examples where they point out the hidden agenda in some very high profile science as they have encountered in the professional travels throughout the world. The two I mentioned above are typical. You see, I remember scientists bragging that nuclear power would be too cheap to meter. In my experience, many people doing science are completely tied up in their world, be it academia or institutional pursuit. Their world seldom extends beyond a rather cloistered environment - and those tend to be things that make them slave to a slim slice of the range of ideologies with a highly filtered source in information on the world at large. If I can be really blunt about it: in the world of climate science, those who adhere to the "safe line" of high level of anthropomorphic contribution are rewarded with funding from many sources (all WITH an agenda), whereas those who question the popular trend (thus pop science) are NOT as likely to be rewarded with funding. So who's opinion and agenda gets expressed in the media - and sadly in the science? A truly objective scientist, IMHO, would start every conversation around anthropomorphic contribution with severe alarm over population and how to humanely correct the real problem. Instead, we see massive amounts of effort to determine how to do more of what is CAUSING whatever that problem is - and to do so with reckless abandon as to economic sustainability. I trust GOOD science to a very high degree, I just don't trust people.

Which is clearly nothing but a troll. Many people have answered - the USA. The reasons should be obvious to anyone not suffering an acute case of - what's the medical term? Oh, yeah: cranium-in-rectum.

That is the lamest attempt at a dodge I have seen in a while. Answer the question.