cannuck

To Argus' original post: Immigration: Our immigration policy sucks the big one. As has been pointed out: we are focused on bringing in the wrong people. Lest nobody happened to notice: we speak English and French here - because were are essentially a European country (culturally). Europe is being ripped apart now by its idiotic immigration patterns. We are culturally diverse, and that is "interesting" in both good and bad ways, but why would you want to destroy the very fabric of our society for some mindless trip through political la-la land?? re post 26, aboriginals: Origin al treaties were not from Canada, but from UK. We would be complete fools to take them verbatim - but we have gone even further and expanded things such as "basic literacy" in education to mean a life long free pass to attend any level of any institution and get paid a boatload of money to bring your whole family along for the ride. And on it goes. The "whites" around Winnipeg don't employ aboriginals because over the last two centuries, they have learned that the probability of them coming to work is exceedinly close to zero. Head for your nearest Northern reserve and see what business is there. Outside of the Northern store (formerly the Hudson's Bay company) and a few drug dealers, there aren't any. Even aboriginals don't hire aboriginals. Why do you suppose white guys should? The horror stories of housing are a double edged sword: the Indian Industry (both on reserve and on the Hill) shove Southern drywall shacks onto the reserves under the noses of people who are largely unemployed and surrounded by woodlands from which they could use that resource to build unlimited housing to their own liking and benefit. But: do you see anyone getting of their ass and doing so? Cut the BS out, give each treaty number a cheque from the feds and let them self-govern by taxing back what they need to provide whatever services - social and otherwise - their elected officials deem appropriate. sick care: we do a reasonable job of health care, and could do a lot more and better. BUT: we do a mediocre job of sick care since we live too close to the Yankee Doodle Dandies who think everything is a business. Every other developed nation knows full well that it is a social service, and should be treated as such. Most have private clinics and practitioners working alongside of public servants with same professional status. As I already mentioned: we are Europeans and need to behave like same, not Yanks - and many of the medical problems will be solved. re post 16, 17, 18 - economy: Surprise Argus missed this one, since without this being dealt with successfully, the rest is irrelevant. Again, we are too close to the Yanks, and have come to believe that Wall Street and Bay Street are part of a healthy economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The majority of what they do is nothing but Casino Captialism, where wealth is redistributed, but seldom is any wealth created. That is why Manhattan is flying high while Main Street USA is in the toilet. AND, we are dead set (careful choice of words) on emulating. Solution is very simple: stop giving a free tax ride to speculative gains (in fact tax the shit out of it) and leave dividend income alone (i.e. no double taxation on it).

Thing is, it is NOT "our" money they are spending. We are long past broke and deeply in debt. It is our grandchildren's money and future they are pissing away. "Sunny ways" will be long gone before the bill comes due.

Since this thread has been totally derailed, I will tell you how my skiing buddy dealt with the last census. This guy hates government of any kind, having been USAF occupational forces after WWII and seeing the results of collapse followed by anarchy. So, filling out a census form was to him an incredible invasion of his privacy. Predictably, the phone rang, and some nice you woman informed him that he may be subject to severe penalties if he did not fill out his census. His reply was: "could you please send someone down here to fill it out?". Her reply was to the effect of why would they do that. He told her: "I hate to admit this to anyone, but I'm IGNORANT, I can't read nor write, so how can I fill out your form?". (Yes, he knows the correct term is "illiterate"). He was excused from filling out his census form. BTW: he celebrated his 94th birthday this spring, but we had no snow left to do our usual end-of-season ski trip.

As much as I admire his contributions of the past, he made a definite faux pas as an Ambassador - even though I am once more cheering for him.

Hey! I got it! Let`s send the refugees out to reserves. Our federal governments of every persuasion seem to want to give Canada to the aboriginals, so let`s REALLY give them a piece of the action. Let THEM take care of the refugees.

You caught me! Yes, it is supposed to be written MM (a corruption of Roman numerals for thousand thousand. Wow, I am using Roman crap and I`m not even Catholic. Even at 1.4mm tall, believe me, I notice our aboriginal population - every time I give the feds more goddam tax $$$$$$$.

I have no idea where you would get such numbers. As of the last census, 1.4mm Canadians were identified as either Indian, Metis or Inuit. That was 4.3% of the total population, not 10% The spending at INAC is over $8 bililon, not $1 billion. That is about $6,000 per capita. That is not $6,000 total, that is $6k ON TOP OF all of the other benefts from government spending from which EVERY CANADIAN including each and every aboriginal benefits already. AND, there are many, MANY other federal programmes that benefit aboriginals wildly disproportionately to other citizens. Balance that against tax revenue RECEIVED of...let me calculate... pretty much SFA. Those natural resources belong to Canada (actually, the provinces), not some special privileged group. Read the treaties. Show me where even the damned Limeys gave any rights to aboriginals in treaties. Treaties essentially provided for fishing, hunting and territorial rights, a basic education, a stipend and not much more. Very, VERY different from the free ride that the aboriginal population takes on the taxpayer's back today.

the next house I build will have a separate utilities building - to accommodate different energy sources in the future. NONE will be electric (although I am investigating geo-thermal if we move into the country). right now, hard to beat the cost of coal or natural gas.

No affiliation with any country/nation other than the one in which I was borne - Canada. If I were to follow the precedent that has been set with aboriginals here, I would be in several countries screaming to have my ancestral property back and be compensated, educated, pampered, funded, etc. for all of the sins of their past. Which ones do you think would entertain such idiocy>?

Sure we can. Help me out here: in this link you will find a list of the nations of the world. I can not find ANY of the 630 "first nations" anywhere on that list - or Quebec for that matter. http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/countries_of_the_world.htm There is only one nation: Canada. We make our own laws. We no longer belong to the UK (arguable point, I conceded). If there is some kind of deal between aboriginals and anyone else, it is (or at least SHOULD be) with the country that made such promises, not Canada. AND, if it does not suit the people of this country, we can simply legislate our way around it - if only we had the balls to do so. In ANY conscious mind, there is no way to have 631 nations within yet another nation. Maybe one day we can grow up and grow a pair and actually BE a country.

Canada is (or SHOULD be) a sovereign state (we might be if Quebec had ever ratified the nonsense that Trudeau attempted). Maybe one day we will elect a government with some brains and balls (obviously, not for another four years at best) and fix what is broken As a sovereign state, we make our own laws. What is legal is what we pass in parliament. nations within nations are not a distraction, it is the fundamental idiocy of the situation.

What I fear about a Trump presidency is that, while he is completely outside of the political "old boys' club" he is very much part of the business world that has destroyed the US economy. He is a speculator and developer, not a producer. The US economy rose to dizzying heights by creating wealth, and it is crashing into the abys because it now thinks it can run an economy based on wealth re-distribution. The main line of the Uniparty simply exchanges deck chairs on the Titanic - each seeking to grant privilege to their lobbies to line up at the trough. Trump will change none of that. Only Sanders had the right stuff to solve the US - and the developed and developing world's problems. Trump's surprising round of strength in the Republican primaries IMHO is what drove popularity of Billary to put a big name on their candidate, instead of one who was right on the money. BTW: As I routinely tell my US business partners, one of the biggest problems the US has is that it thinks EVERYTHING is a business - particularly sick care. Until they catch up to the rest of the G7 and realize it is a social service, they are doomed to perpetuate one of the most cruel and failed public policy screw-ups on Earth. Socialized medicine is not some kind of ideology, it is simply the best way to pay for sick care. HEALTH care is very much the responsibility of government, but the US is so far away from being able to pull that off, it is not even worth discussing. And, YES, I think that Canada is a radical socialist nation - when it comes to social services. I live here by choice. AND, I am not a radical or any other kind of socialist, just pragmatic.

I actually work in the utility side of industry, and have done work for OPG, Ontario Hydro, etc. It is the most inefficient, incompetent utility(s) I have encountered over decades within several continents. To think that you could just wave a magic wand and get them to support several orders of magnitude of load from unproven (or proven impractical) energy sources is a genuine laugh. The idea that Ontario could do nothing about the world economy is true, but what is COULD have done is be a hell of a lot more competitive to function within that world economy. THAT is Ontario's failing. For instance: the need to pay every worker in Toronto enough to afford a million dollar tarpaper shack pretty much guarantees that it is impossible to compete with a Chinese worker who will live in his highly subsidized apartment or condo and work his butt off 6 days a week, 12 hours a day to get ahead.

My particular beef is that the treaties were negotiated not by Canada, but by a British crown colony. Aboriginals should have a beef with Buckingham Palace, not Ottawa. Our real beef is with anyone stupid enough to NOT kick the slimey limeys to the curb and make Canada a truly independent nation, and accepting the truly idiotic idea of hundreds of nations and national governments within one country.

The "most vulnerable" Canadians are the unborne, if you really want to be precise.

There are a few key elements in making that work. First, the "do gooders" that have boots on the ground are aid agencies, who's employees are paid to give out aid. So, that is what they do. They make their money by passing cash and a narrowly defined set of goods on to refugee camps. That results in the same, squalid or sterile camps where refugees are left unemployed and tended to by an army of do-gooders. Why is it so hard to understand that of the people being displaced, EVERY profession and trade is represented??? If you/we were to provide them with the funds, or THEIR list of materials, they will construct shelter, make meals, provide services, etc. needed to sustain that community. They just need some cash to make it happen. Of course, the host countries are horrified by that notion, as they will end up with permanent residents - just as WE be horrified in proportion. These are not people who spent their life to achieve the goal of living in Canada, si why would anyone want to get them to do so? They have a life, they have a country, they have families, they have a culture - AT HOME. They can return to that when the region settles its difficulties when they live on the border in a country that is anxious to have them go back home. Where someone to make me czar of refugee camps, I would start by defining an engineering package of temporary structures and infrastructure. When a new camp was needed, the do-gooders could simply tell the first arrivals to set up a government (blueprint for that supplied) and here are the specs for what you can build, and how you can build it. Cash will be in the nearest local bank until you get their building up and running, when they can open your branch. When you take millions of a certain persuasion away from a conflict zone, you have just achieved the "other side's" ultimate goal: you removed them from the area - allowing them to simply take over their property, the resources, their culture and their country. Palestinians refugees have been crammed into camp/ghettos since 1948. Why haven't all of these do-gooder countries taken in the Palestinian refugees? I know Israel would jump for joy, just as Asad amd ISIL are now.

I guess we know what the problem with the CPC is now: had the whip been made of the "right stuff", he would have responded to Trudeau's grasp with a sharp jab to the schnoz. The only thing a bully understands is consequence of like kind.

Nah. He'll be shooting up, not shooting people.

From a cold, hard look at immigration: anyone who lives their life by the strict dictates of some idiotic fairy tale is clearly a brick or two short of a load. When we already have a preponderance of citizens who follow ONE set of fairy tales, why invite conflict by importing a bunch of people who are so focused upon ANOTHER set of fairy tales? It would be so much better for the country to simply limit immigration to those with the intellectual capacity to deal with reality in a logical and reasonable manner

that got me wondering...and you called Africa on the money. I expected larger family sizes in Islamic states http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN

For those who can't understand what is "wrong" on reserves: Quote: "and $2.4-million to buy, transport and install 13 pre-fabricated homes – " $185k each for a home being paid to an outside contractor when you have thousands of unemployed sitting around waiting for the Great White Provider to "solve their housing problem".

This thread brings up a LOT of topics, but let me cherry-pick. Where is it written in stone that we must have "population growth"? What is supposedly so good about it?? The issue of child care, increased birth rate, etc. was brought up. So was the issue of real estate costs. If you stop and think about things logically, the reasons we are suffering staggering increase in real estate values is that we give it a free ride on what should be taxable income, and we build crap housing that has to be replaced ever two generations. One of the reasons we need child care is that the cost of real estate is so far out of proportion to income, Mamma has to work her whole life just to pay the developer's margin. One reason we have a lower birth rate is that Mamma can only afford to take a few months off for child birth and then has to go back to work to pay for the house (and the "stuff" we think we need). Kill off real estate speculation, and she can stay home and have as many kids as she wants. Raising a family is a FULL time job, not another "service" that can be jobbed out to the state or newly arrived Canadian contractors. I don't mind immigration, but I am not crazy about the idea of allowing immigrants who do not have the money, language and technical skills to be productive. The idea that we have a "service economy" is not untrue, it is just that those services are NOT a benefit to the economy (unless we can export them), they are a cost that ties up human and financial resources that could be spent on creating wealth instead of merely re-distributing. I have spent a lot of time working in many countries, and I love learning about their culture - in its native setting. Not at all crazy about it being in my back yard when I come home. BUT: what the hard line anti- immigration bunch do not seem to realize: the vast majority of the "non-Canadian" behavior is diluted a great deal by the second generation - who to me are as much Canadian as I (third generation Irish/English/German), but admittedly NOT as "Canadian" as my wife (Selkirk settler/Metis). Sadly, I have to observe that the most divisive force in society is not ethnicity or culture, but religion and politics. I would be fine was banning that BS.

My politics are generally somewhere right of Genghis Khan, but I believe that GAI is a worthwhile thing to consider. One would have to do so federally, and eliminate almost all of the current federal, provincial and municipal agencies that grow fat, dumb and happy in the process of administering to the gateway to social assistance. Just cut a cheque to everyone with a SIN who has reached elegibility age (18?) I would like to see something around $1,200 a month flat rate for everyone, with EVERY penny earned being taxed at a flat rate adjusted annually to balance the budget. No more welfare, no more unemployment enjoyment, no more worker's comp, no more pensions, no more student funding issues (loans for more expensive courses, of course), NO MORE TREATIES, etc. You can't afford to live in the big city on GAI? Move to small town. Yeah, flat tax on everything except speculative gains (DRILL that HARD). The mere fact we are importing workers from half way around the world to do hospitality and food service jobs tells you our current way of doing things is totally screwed up.

Actually, people who obsess over what is or is not "racist, bigotted, xenophobic, etc." do not move forward. I find most of this stuff is tossed aside by people actually going somewhere, doing something.

First, I suggest you read Scott Mayers' and Accountability Now's posts, as I imagine you have. Collectively, they have a fairly accurate picture of the situation. The idea of there being "nations within a nation" is simply preposterous and unworkable. AND: Canada is pretty much ignorant of what this means and how to deal with it. This thread is a perfect analogy: most of the discussion has been railing over what the politically correct name for aboriginals should...or MUST be. Who gives a rat's ass? There are serious problems that simply go on ignored while we idiotically dispute pure BS. We, as a nation have created a dependent society of persons isolated from the physical balance of Canada, and by "funding" this model, have enabled a ruling class who are skilled at exploiting this situation to their personal benefit (I/we call them "per diem men"). We did a study at one point when trying to help one particular group of aboriginals, and 20-odd years ago, adding up ALL of the programmes that were to benefit treaty Indians the total was far closer to $20,000 per capita, not $9k. Our estimate, though, was that less than 1/3 of that ever saw a living, breathing aboriginal. The vast majority disappeared into what we called the "Indian Industry" - the incredible maze of government employees and preferred consultants who soaked up most of the money. The little bit that did dribble through was then placed in the hands of Chief and Council, and you can believe the level of corruption and incompetence was staggering (and I assume still is). If you ever bother to actually GO to a remote reserve (and I have spent years living among them) you would usually find that there was only a tiny couple of businesses on reserve: always a Bay store (now called "Northern" stores) and some kind of storefront of a token band business of some kind. ALL of the service businesses that we all take for granted that ANY remote community would have to support life on that reserve are simply not there. Nobody is fixing the cars, trucks, boats and snow machines that litter every front yard. Nobody is running a carpentry shop to build or repair structures, no electricians are there to keep the lights on, no plumbing shop is there to keep the toilets flushing, and on it goes. WHY? Simple. In the rest of this fantastic nation, people are pretty much on their own to earn a living and considered to have "failed" if they require the state to care for them. So, we generally earn some money by looking at what we can do to earn some money and do so. On reserve, we (and, yes, I DO blame the Royal "WE" for perpetuating this problem) have developed this model where these remote communities exist by some kind of declaration, and are "funded" by handing money to band and council. So, what little services DO exist happen by accident as once those with pretty much unaccountable access to the "funding" buy themselves and their family new trucks and homes, take a trip to Vegas and pretty much ignore the ridiculous reality that is right on their doorstep. IF any services are provided (and as you can see from video coverage of homes falling to pieces and schools burned down and replaced with hockey rinks), they are provided by the band - as there is simply no local economy outside of booze and drug distribution that is not communally controlled by council. (on edit) I am ignoring outfitters for now - another can of worms. Is there a solution? Sure. And it is very simple. If you really want to see "sellf government" on reserve, and you agree that Canada owes something more than the very basic allowances within treaties to aboriginal persons, then just simple calculate that value and write a check to each person with a treaty number. Then, their leaders can do as our off-reserve leaders and governments must do, and tax back what they need to provide the services that each community believes needs to be provided. Accountability then goes to the level where it belongs - within the community. Worth noting: there are non-aboriginal communities all over the North, and they seem to do just fine being similarly removed from the comforts, conveniences and services of the South. Why do we not want to model remote reserves after those successful communities instead of trying to mimic some inner city core welfare community???? (hint: partly because there would be no benefit to the "Indian Industry" - that has now expanded to include news media). Before someone tries to dismiss me as another Southern partisan junkie: as I have mentioned, I lived and done business in and out of the North and on reserves for two decades in the past. I have had the Forest Gump opportunity to discuss matters with a good friend when he was in office and after his retirement as Treaty Commissioner (we seldom agreed, but we remain friends) and my children are the last generation from my wife's side of the family eligible for status - which they refuse to seek.