cannuck

If 30% of that was ex-government, you're damned right I think you missed the entire point of a guaranteed annual income. First of all, it would be paid to EVERYONE (sort of an negative start of the income tax table) so you get rid of ALL government handout programmes - and all of the useless tits on a power trip dispensing privilege to those under their thumb. The support level is always there, so you get MORE money by simply doing something - enough to live a very basic lifestyle (that would not be the case with the GAI). Think about it this way: nobody is starving now in Canada, but it takes a huge army of very, very expensive bureaucrats to select who wins that lottery (you need to deal with the whole "Indian Industry" to begin to appreciate what I mean).

My politics tend to be far right of center, and this is definitely one policy with which I heartily agree. Our system of means tested programmes is simply and employment programme for bureaucrats. Being truly conservative means to move away from dispensing privilege and produce policies that are truly egalitarian. Being truly conservative means giving EVERYONE the same opportunities, and EVERYONE the same protection under the law. Also, that is the same reason why I was sick to death of the Harper "conservatives" hiding behind the name. Where is right to work legislation (job 1)??? Why is the government payroll still so incredibly bloated? Why is government still sticking its nose into every nook and cranny of business, subsidizing business, providing free tax rides to speculators, etc., etc.? Why the unfettered support to murder Canadian children? conservative my arse.

So true. What happened in North America was the the huge amount of press that the tree huggers gave to hydraulic fracturing meant that the oil industry caught Wall Street's eye, and ever flakey idiot investment banker and hedge fund threw BILLION$$ at the oil biz, that got the frac guys to be even more agressive, etc. Just so happened that the rest of the market had set the stage with $100 oil, that being the catalyst that got the interest of the investment community turn into an orgy of investment. Deals were being done that just made no economic sense - unless oil stayed goofy high. Sadly, the army of people who considered themselves business geniuses at $100 in a boom market found out in a hurry what has always happened with oil (and let's face it, almost any resource) price and it corrected after the glut of production filled market demand. The price will come back somewhat, but there isn't anything yet to play out to make it happen. The US side, though, will do its part as the massive number of frac plays hit their early and very steep decline curve and there are simply not enough rigs working to replace that lost production. AND, once the banks lose their shirts from current investments, they will be shy of petro for quite a while. Meanwhile, the smart money will do as it has always done and buy production when the crap really hits the fan (it has started already) - knowing of course that the solution for low oil prices is indeed low oil prices.

IMHO, the UN has become a self-serving bureaucracy, not exactly lap dog for Uncle Sam at all.

Geez, the Sunny Way spin doctors are working overtime today. Friggin hilarious. It is a snub, pure and simple, from countries who find trouble with ISIS treatment of civilians. Who started what, how, where and when is irrelevant. Stopping the people slaughtering men, women and children for a twisted ideology is what this IS all about, and we are now regarded as no longer part of the solution. Sorry if such a simple truth boggles the minds of Sunny Ways spinners, but I see an awful lot of other simple truths that are similarly mind boggling to them, so I guess we are in for four more years of sheer stupidity being the way of the day. I guess Trudeau will have to get a class IV hitch stuck on the back of Daddy's 300SL.

I think you have kind of missed the entire point of employment. If you even consider government as an employer, you are not likely to EVER contribute anything to anyone but yourself. There are endless employment opportunities for those who have bothered to look at the labour market, find where the need is greatest and NOT heavily dependent upon cyclical resource prices, train for that and be prepared to go to WORK, not show up expecting to be entitled to a free ride and a paycheque. One of the companies I work with takes people into our department with either 2 year diplomas at tech school or engineering degrees as students to find out if they have any real ability to actually work. Those who do will NEVER have to look back for the rest of their lives. Usually, second year out of school, they are filing 6 digit tax returns (due to overtime). I have worked with some of the same people for over 20 years, but for the most part, it is very hard to KEEP people who are able to learn and work - as competitors and clients are constantly trying to poach them - regardless of what "the economy" is doing. All you have to do is realize that the story your HS guidance counsellor gave you that you need to be Doctor Lawyer or Indian Chief to succeed was a line of BS. You just have to be prepared to be useful and productive, that is all.

Has anyone done the accounting for how many refugees could have been housed on Syria's borders in SAFE, protected, well stocked camps for all of the money being piddled away to displace them a half world away from their home? These clowns are dragging Canada's name through the mud on a daily basis. Next thing you know, Goodale will be lobbying cabinet to restore the CWB.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/01/19/canada-not-invited-to-paris-meeting-to-discuss-islamic-state-fight.html After decades of honourable military service, Sajjan is been castrated by his own party and PM. So sad to see such an important and dedicated guy reduced to having some snivelling politico try to spin this disaster with "we will still be at the NATO meeting on Feb 11". DUH!!!!! We are NATO members (at least for now). I was embarrassed when we elected such a lightweight as PM, but I am deeply ashamed now.

The rough numbers I use are that something like 60% of Americans are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, fed/state gov't employment or VA benefits so actually have government paid medical insurance of one kind or another. I would guess 20% have good private coverage, 10% are poorly covered and 10% have no coverage at all. Obamacare is an effort to solve that, but a total disaster in execution. I am an employer in the USA, and am painfully aware of the past and present medical insurance situation. We have also had employees come on board with serious pre-existing conditions, and thus I can tell you, living in a relatively sparse population area (WY) you need big bux on the table to get to competent specialists - or simply drop dead. That has been my personal experience. I had never heard of the Oregon study, and find that extremely interesting, and quite contrary to what I see here. Of course, we don't have to fill any forms at all unless being admitted, and one must factor in the cultural distrust of government in the USA to even try to begin to explain those results!!! Could you link any summaries for us?

I have to add universal medical insurance to that list. Sick care and health care should be regarded in policy as what they are in fact - social service. Proof is in the pudding: US version only works for the few privileged to have access to the best of care.

IMHO: government's place in the grand scheme of things is to regulate and enforce with wisdom. Until it understands the difference between wealth creation and wealth redistribution, it can not achieve the former goal. It is also the obvious method of funding and often delivering social services. What it has to learn, though, is how to contract out much of this service delivery to the far more capable world of business. Government should have no ability to MAKE a decision that affects much of anything except providing for level playing field rules and enforcement, and funding social services.

I will give you a very broad sample of one. One of my BILs has had a lot of shoulder problems, and is no stranger to the sick care system. In between major surgery 4 & 5, he had been given a list of diagnostic imaging appointments, with an X-ray coming a few weeks before an MRI. When he went to the clinic, he sat for several hours waiting for his X-ray appointment (obviously one that was several hours late. About half way through, he became extremely irritated listening to the radiology techs in the MRI room giggling and exchanging stories about their personal life. He went to the desk and asked that, since the MRI was clearly NOT being used and was fully staffed, why was he waiting weeks to come back and no doubt waste more hours in the same waiting room when he could just go in there while he was awaiting the x-rays he was to receive? The desk staff were apalled to think anyone could be so presumptuous, and explained to him that things just didn't work that way! 3+ hours, nobody in there. Government is totally inept at providing any service, much less critical services such as medical diagnostics. Yes, I agree they have a place in the whole mess, but to deny the ability of the private sector to manage effectively and deliver a defined service to the sick care insurance plan at a reasonable cost is truly idiotic. The irony is, Worker's Comp finally tired of the sick care bureaucrats and unions causing such a ridiculous delay in a vital diagnostic procedure that they bundled him up onto an airplane and flew him to a private clinic in Alberta for his MRI. From the time they decided to do so, until he spent a day going there and back was less than a week, vs. several MONTHS from the government sick care fiasco.

While I agree strongly with both of these posts, what I find missing is the recognition that the "problem" we have with emissions, resource consumption and sustainability overall is one of population, not efficiencies.

You have to be careful in dampening ideological enthusiasm with the facts. There are huge problems with reliability and capacity within the North American grid. The US would be in very deep doo doo were it not for the massive amounts of hydro power that MB, NF and QC export cheaply across the 49th. What makes everything possible is having base load generation that is extremely cheap and able to absorb a lot of variation in load (as well as tolerate high turn down). Hydro is ideal, but if you don't have the resource and can not tolerate the massive environmental damage of flooding reservoirs, it is a limited option. Coal is used simply because it is very cheap and replacing that with the much more limited and price-volatile natural gas as a source works for now, but still have huge GHG side. All of the botique power solutions that make people feel good, such as distributed simple cycle gas turbines, alternatives of most sorts, etc. are massively expensive and not able to float well with demand changes. The reason utilities can play these ridiculous political games is that their cheap base load provides most of the power and can absorb the load variations that the alternatives don't do well and can not do cost effectively. Just as an example: Those who think wind power is "free" once built need to realize that the cost of maintenance alone is usually greater than the cost of typical base load sourced power. What makes me LMFAO is all of this effort to make different, ineffective and expensive solutions try to work to create even more energy to be wasted by our idiotic lifestyle. I will start to take it seriously when I see the David Suzuki's of this world walk the walk instead of running the mouth. And, yes, I have a pretty good idea of his lifestyle as one of my very close friends was a senior member of his staff for most of the last 3 decades.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Yes, our methodology might be very good, but our wait times are unacceptable.

Very true it is an indicator used to set monetary policy, but reality is that it includes so many things that are speculative in nature that it distorts how the GDP relates to wealth being created, rather than just re-distributed (i.e. by speculative gains). Until economists learn to separate out the Casino Capitalism part of economic activity from genuinely productive use of capital, GDP will simply be the blind leading the blind in monetary policy.

People flocked to Edmonton and Calgary because there was work there. They are trying to flock off but since the NDP got elected and oil crashed you can not sell a house - because due to the ridiculous over price ($500k is a nice starter home) you can't sell what you have. Take away the free ride on the taxpayer for speculative gain that the price goes back to replacement. I can tell you are a realtor.

10% is a HUGE increase - especially when you consider that even 10% back down, we would still be in deficit position. The new residents of the Hill are showing their true, totally irresponsible colours.

http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/waiting-times.htm http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canada-ranked-last-among-oecd-countries-in-health-care-wait-times-1.1647061 Sorry I could not respond yesterday, got a bit busy around here. I can not find anything about the legal issue of wait times, but the best overall and relatively non-biased article I found was from Wiki!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_system_in_Japan Somewhere in there it should cover wait times, which are definitely lowest in OECD, but I think by policy goal was legistlated to zero

We all get along (right now) in Canada because we can rape the phenomenal natural resources and rack up totally unsustainable debt to fund our cozy lifestyle. If we don't learn how to create wealth fairly soon, that will change. The rich keep getting richer because the we (through government that is there to make and enforce rules in OUR interest) is able to follow the US example and give speculative gain a free ride on the tax system. Thus, the rise (from the ashes of 1929) of Casino Captialism. Think about it: if you are going to run a business that is actually DOING something to create wealth, you will be a hero if you can pay a 10% dividend, as you must compete to be successful. If you merely gamble on the outcome, you can make 10x rather than 0.1x on your money at risk. So, where to you think a greedy bank or individual wants to put his or her money? The strongest encouragement and endorsement by rulemakers is you can do so without a big tax bite, whereas productive business gets it up the hoop. Want a daily example? Residential real estate. We think nothing about paying a half million dollars for what is justifiably maybe a $100k non-revenue asset. And we can trade into that speculative gain tax free. This in not just about the rich, but about the mindless masses who think they are going to be rich without doing any work. Paying the cost of big city residential real estate means that the second person in the family will spend their lives working to pay child care and mortgage - and kids will be raised by strangers. Just to pay for something there was no need to pay in the first place. Take away the tax free ride and watch real estate values fall to something closer to replacement value (as it should be). We laugh at the Yanks screwing people over for sick care, but then line up at the trough to screw our neighbour over for real estate.

I have a long-developed theory that if you pay people too much for what they do, their focus turns to how to spend what you are paying them (and how to get more) instead of doing their job. If you think about it, that would fit very well into the sick care picture in Canada.

As I understand it waiting times of any sort for treatment are illegal in Japan, but I do not know if that applies to electives. While we really DO have pretty decent sick care, reality is of the OECD countries, we are dead last in elective waiting times.

Argus, you hit this nail right on the head (must have received one of those $300 titanium framing hammers for Christmas). We are in such deep doo doo because we really have no idea (when I say "we", I mean the royal we that extends well beyond our national borders) how wealth is created vs. how it is merely re-distributed. The left side of the political spectrum believes we just have to tax the rich and re-distribute their money and the right side thinks we really don't need to actually work, just speculate on equities or derivatives and re-distribute that money (mostly into a few lucky pockets). And the whole bloodly lot thinks it is just fine to borrow the money to keep on interfering with everything from a central or regional government, and our grandkids can just pay the bill. Until we understand that no wealth is created until value is added to a resource, and that we have a mess of resources beyond ANY other country per capita - but to which we really need to add value before cashing in - we are and will continue to be screwed. The idea that government should do what it does (distribute privilege) is also what we do not understand. Most of those subsidies of which you speak are directed to specificly privileged recipients. Government needs to deal with governing - i.e. making rules and enforcing them - and get the hell out of the privilege dispensing business. It has pretty much a 100% perfect track record of failure - and we have not learned from that yet. My test of good government goes back to Sir Roger Douglas, who defined in four words how he managed to fix the problems of New Zealand's extremely interventionist government when they went broke: "we simply removed privilege". That meant that for government benefits of any kind, either EVERYONE was elegible, or NOBODY was. No special privilege for anyone. Realizing that there ARE things that government must pay (since we do believe in social programmes), THAT is how it is done fairly and effectively. Otherwise, the business of government should be to legislate, regulate and enforce - by the principles of no privilege.

I can sympathize with your sentiments, but reality is that China is still very much a Marxist Communist country. Yes, there is a HUGE private economy, but much of the key core industries is still state owned. The way to change that is to deal with them, not slam the door in their face. Just to give you an example: my closest friend in China was a very senior exec with one of the big Chinese state owned engineering firms. Drank the cool-aid every day. He got into an overseas post and opened their Damam office, started to see things differently (and note that even the Saudis let them invest and own stuff). When he went back to China, he left them for GE, and as of this year, he has almost completed the process to emmigrate to Canada and open his own business. Just scale that up to 1.7 billion. Besides, as I said, Nexen is not that big a deal in the oil sands or patch. If it buys some good diplomatic mileage for us, it was well worth it (and I can tell you from what I have seen - it did).

Don't want to stray too far or long OT, but the need for foreign workers existed because employers couldn't find enough Canadians who would do the jobs. I can't speak for the East, but around here, the employment levels were so high, employers were lobbying hard for work visa programmes to hire tradesmen as we were drastically short, and the fast food/sleep factory people got their shots in to get the low wage people they could not get. I am not very familiar with those kinds of businesses, but I understand that there is a genuine cap on what the consumer will pay, so they really need relatively low wage people to do those generally menial tasks. I can't agree that Capitalism is supposed to do what you state. It is supposed to make capital available, period. Out of scope for this discussion is how genuine capitalism has been replaced by casino capitalism and corporatism - that definitely affects how the workplace plays out, Labour laws and social conventions decide what is good and bad, legal and illegal, acceptable and unacceptable in employment.