cannuck

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.

It is my position that faced with no work or cheap work, Canadians (and Americans) need to seriously consider taking what is available. We make it far too convenient to simply stay at home as a ward of the state while people with a bit of ambition will do the work we are "too good" to do. In case you didn't notice, that is part of the whole mess of why we give our money to China instead of the widget factory down the road - we are too good to make widgets. You just demonstrated my point eloquently. BTW: EVERY Vietnamese refugee who came here many years ago with barely a word or two of English too every and any job they could get. Try going out into that community and see what their children and grandchildren are doing today (hint: they sure as hell are not on unemployment enjoyment!)

I do understand what you are trying to say, but reality is that we are not "full". What we have are cities and reserves full of people who have no desire or intention to work. Otherwise, how do you explain the army of Asian guest workers it takes to run our fast food and hospitality businesses? Check the checkouts at almost any big box store these days, and you will no doubt notice that there are Eastern races galore who seem to be willing to do that work. During a recent project in the far North of BC, where aboriginal unemployment is HUGE, there were the same "newly arrived" faces behind every counter. The real complicating factor is that we long-term resident immigrants (I am third generation) have bought into the US model believing that the world owes us a living, and we are "too good" to do any actual productive work. We all teach our kids that they are entitled to be a doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief (or banker, rock star, stick-and-ball hero, etc.) and need not trouble ourselves with the daily grind of making widgets, serving "the man", etc. Worse yet, none of us have learned to invest into our own business and community. Instead of learning how an economy works, we give out $$$ to institutional financiers, who will "invest" in mostly speculative transactions - all of which leave no money behind to fund Main Street - where virtually ALL wealth is created by adding value to resources or delivery necessary services. Finally, Canadians on average have some totally ridiculous idea that Government has any idea how to run an economy or business - and that we should turn to them to solve all of the problems that WE - by our laziness, greed and ignorance have created.

They differ only in the timing of their isolation in camps, I think you will find. People adapt to the norm of what is around them, but it takes a bit of time. Take someone of a disfunctional, desperate situation where looting, bribery, treachery, murder, robbery are the only way to either protect your family or feed them, and rape and murder are the privilege of conquest, and they will not overnight become little clones of politically correct Liberalism. This is exactly why the problem is Berlin (and elsewhere - as they are re-settling a MILLION refugees). We are, from what I have seen, taking the better approach - break the community up into as many fragments as possible and immerse them within Canadian mainstream. But don't think for a minute that the transformation into a beer-guzzling, hockey night in Canada couch potato will happen overnight.

I am a bigoted, right wing, red neck conservative. I also deal with business and political leaders from dozens of countries, travel extensively and have had many extended stays in places not exactly recommended as tourist destinations, including active war zones. Sorry to burst your bubble, Bubba.

I just had a conversation with one of my very good friends in Berlin. Seems some of these refugees (I believe some of ours) are being housed in a nearby sports complex (built in the '50s). They seem to have diplomatic level of immunity from prosecution, and the resulting crime wave has made life so dangerous that he has taken his wife and children back to Ekaterinburg for safety, leaving his job, lease apartment, etc. behind. Yes, travel can open your mind, but you must first take off the rose coloured glasses and actually see WTF goes on in the rest of the world.

Common sense? from a POLITICAL PARTY or its leaders? Sorry, but you are living in la-la land. I somehow doubt you have ever sat in at a cabinet level meeting or with party executive. Common sense has nothing do to with it. Rewarding your supporters and advancing you party's particular brand of anything-but-common-sense pipedreams is 100% of the process. Special interests that are there simply to screw over the taxpayer (the ones with the $$$$$ to lobby hard) are the problem. Lesser special interests can have a better platform if they are not competing with the influence of the big bux - all of which is defeated by the elimination of parties.

Harper signed off on it because the deal was done by business people who followed the rules of doing business within Canada. Hate to disturb your fantasy world, but it takes far more than one Prime Minister to do so. As it was, this changed the rules for foreign government controlled entities to have control of Canadian resources, but when CNOOC came to the table, it WAS within the rules. Harper and his cabinet did a fair job of walking and extremely fine line that could have had serious consequences to foreign direct investment in Canada had he slammed the door on someone who was doing was was entirely legal. Besides, as I mentioned, Occidental/Nexen was not that big a part of the oil sands and the oil patch. Oh: I should also mention that in the world of crude oil, the vast majority of ALL major players are government owned or controlled. Think of Sinopec, CNPC, CNOOC, Petronas, Aramco, Rosneft, NNPC, Shell (yes, ROYAL Dutch Shell). PDVSA, Pemex, INOC, NIOC, Neste, Statoil. Each of these have some presence in each other's oil patch both upstream and down. It is part of being a global citizen vs. the concept of being a shivering, isolationist, protectionist coward hiding in a corner.

The only need one would have for political leadership is to forward some partisan idea of policy. This, IMHO, should strictly be the job of parliament in response to its electorate - i.e. sending the member to represent what he campaigned to do when elected. Given a partisan site for lobbyists to focus is exactly why we have rule-by-special interest. THAT is "political leadership" at its best.

Uh....are you for real? Stephen Harper did not sell anything. Nexen sold itself to CNOOC, as did Talisman to Repsol. "Canada" didn't own either one. What Canada DOES own is all of the resources, and anyone taking them out of the ground will pay their royalties to Canada for the privilege. To GET those resources out of the ground, someone has to put their money up, take a HELL of a lot of risk, employ an awful lot of Canadians in the process. That is the oil business. This post makes out as if Nexen was the be-all and end-all of the Canadian patch. They were merely one more company among hundreds - most remarkable for taking the plunge to try to tease oil out of the Athabasca Oil Sands. That - especially right now - is more like throwing a few billion into a great big hole in the ground and hoping like hell the thousands of people working there will be able to squeeze enough oil out of the sand to make a profit. - something very, very unlikely at $30odd oil. Also worth noting: Nexen/CNOOC not only extracts, they add value HERE by making synthetic crude. The industry is global. Always has been. Take a look at who is in the Canadian patch and downstream, and you might notice that Exxon, Shell, Suncor and so on are FOREIGN companies, trading on the NYSE and TSE - exactly as is and does CNOOC (ltd.). Even the sort-of Canadian giants - Husky for one headquartered in Calgary - are owned in part by foreign entities. AND: you as a Canadian can buy as much of each of those companies as you would like One post suggests we are going to run out of oil and have to buy it from China. Ahh...geez...that is just plain silly. The largest known deposit of hyrdocarbons in the world is the Athabasca Oil Sands (not by many technical standards conventional oil so seldom shows up) and 50% of the largest contiguous oil reservoir by surface area (the Bakken shales) are in Canada. If we REALLY tried hard, we might be able to put a dent in the Athabasca in another century or two, long after the rest of the world has run out of oil.

I don't think I am wandering off topic, but I do believe the problem is quite real, but the solutions proposed thus far miss the mark. I also believe there is a much broader problem with almost ALL governments - rule-by-special-interest - that is facilitated by partisanship. My very carefully considered solution is to eliminate political parties from government in any form. That way, the only way you get to elect your representative would be based on what they claim and are known to believe in at the constituency level. The PM and cabinet would be elected by and from Parliament at large, and subject to recall by that same body under well defined guidelines and rules. That would bring the back benchers very much into play on a daily basis - mostly through effective committee work, but always with the Sword of Damacles power over executive. Also, EVERY vote would become a free vote - and the sanctity of that would be heavily protected. Anyone who thinks the back benches have ANY real power in Provincial or Federal politics has never been very close to government and cabinet. Anyone who thinks any one party has all of the answers is even more naive. Anyone who thinks political parties are not for sale cheap is an idiot.

I would not put the US dead last in sick care, nor health care, but I would certainly put them dead last in cost vs. results. - bang for the buck. What I do find deplorable - and inexcusable - that the most common cause of personal bankruptcy is sick care bills. Back to the root of the problem: not being able to separate business from social services.

The flower childrens' children coming to roost in Ottawa will be a continuation of the Alberta left wing disaster. They will run the economy into the ground overnight, and debt of our grandchildren through the roof learning just how little anyone in Ottawa knows about much of anything except spending money they don't have. You can't run an economy by lifting it up by your bootstraps. It is no different from starting a business: you don't quit your day job until you have your plan B operating successfully. These idiots will never figure that out - and we will get the bill for their ineptitude.

I did not say there were any good excuses for the wait times in Canada - except that our various government monopoly on service delivery provinces screw up pretty much everything they touch when it comes to management, whereas provinces that behave in a more European way (accept public and private mix) score so much better. I added the not-for-profit comments since the buzzwords of the left and unions (i.e. same, same) are that profit is evil. I have to say, though, that when delivering a social service, it actually is. BTW: yes, the costs a Mayo can be relatively high, but the results tend to be extremely good (thinking now of diagnostics).

Rue: Thanks for taking the time and trouble to make such an excellent post. I wish people with your experience, insight and attitude were more involved and respected in policy and education.

It definitely varies from province to province as to just how much Joe Stalin is having his way. I live in SK, the birthplace of government sick care (and socialism) in North America, so pretty much have had a ringside seat to what went right and what went left (not necessarily wrong) in sick care. I am also a US taxpayer and employer, so get to see that side of the equation. To begin with, we need to separate out what we do have that is universal and similar to all other G7 countries with a qualified exception being the US (yes, I am leaving China out of this) - and that is sick care insurance. Regardless of whether there are user fees or not, we all have a tax funded insurance scheme that runs the whole sick care system. This is obviously where the US differs dramatically: they consider sick care a business, where as most of the rest of us at least realize that sick care insurance is a public service - as, IMHO, it should be. The yanks have their head so far up their rectum in this respect, they tend to politicize this issue to the extreme, and just can't wrap their head around (hard to do when it is placed as previously mentioned) the whole concept of how EVERYONE else in the G7 funds sick care. Where I have to disagree with Argus, is that if Joe Stalin were running out sick care DELIVERY system, we would not have any waiting times (as, for instance, you would find in Japan where the legally allowed waiting time is ZERO). Similarly, Cuba is a good example of how a genuinely full function Marxist-Leninist (Marti-ist?) economy treats health care and sick care. It is purely a social service with service delivery by the state. Where we screw up is by adopting the quasi-US stance of making medicine a near-business. BUT: instead of a wide open competitive, free market, we instead grant the very special privilege for medicine to be practiced by cartels, whose rates and procedures are set WITH NO COMPETITION by colleges of physicians and surgeons. By the same token, we stop medicine short of BEING a real business by the state limiting who can provide what services, how, when and where. In Alberta, you can get an MRI any day of the week on short notice - just pay the bill. In SK (or MB) you will wait for an indefinite period of time - in which you might very well deteriorate or die - just because the damned government administered cartel could not organize a piss up at a brewery. Now, if you happen to be a ward of the state in SK, and they want to get diagnostic results (for worker's comp for instance), what do you think they do? Yup, the FLY or bus the patient to AB for a quick MRI!!!!! Talk about que jumping! Of course, back here in the last millenium (as of this year) the public service unions will cry foul about the recent introduction of private MRI services in SK - all focused on the standard politics of fear and envy by citing that same thing (que jumping) with NOBODY having the sense to point out that these are new MRIs to the system, and anyone using their own cash to get an image are FREEING UP their spot in the public screw-up system for everyone else to move up a notch. Why that paragraph? Simple: in most of the rest of the G7 (except obviously USA) public and private service co-exists with very little conflict. Euros especially seem to realize that sick care is a social service, and whether provided by a state employee or a contractor willing to work for the posted fees, who really gives a damn? It should not be an ideological battleground, it should simply be what is practical - and there it is just that. BTW: I have left a lot of the US stuff out of the mix for now, but I will be the first to admit, some of the very best sick care in the world can be bought in the USA - for quite a price. But the VERY best (IMHO) comes from the Mao Clinics - that are, wait for it....A NOT FOR PROFIT COMPANY. Just thought I would throw that out as food for thought.