69cat

Huxley, you understand that you undermined your entire arguement regarding democracy when you say you would exclude the Bloc, right there you say you would rewrite the rules to allow your favored candidate and to exclude another. Very undemocratic of yourself. Remember watching a debate with the Bloc at the podium? Yeah, it was pretty good, Gilles Duceppe it must have been. There was zero chance of him forming government and in fact was there to destroy Canada, but democracy allowed him to be there. But in your democracy you would ban him, even though he had the required seats for official party status to meet the requirements of the debate. And i think at that time we had lib, ndp, con, bloc and reform on the ballots, be a heck of complicated set of forum rules you would need like would you require a candidate in each provinc/territory, or each riding? Maybe you dont even need a seat in Parliament in your new forum rules, if not 12 then why even 1? How do you get one person elected if you can not participate in this national debate.

Nothing against May Huxley. But also keep in mind you can have any platform you want when you have no chance of forming government so Green Party platform may be quite different years from now vs today if they keep gaining ground. Looks like in 1963 it was decided on a threshold to obtain official party status, 12 seats is required. It is what it is but it is not undemocratic for somebody to create a definition at some point in time. And those hosting the forum may simply decide that the members must have official party status. I have seen a few parties come and go and never get invited to national debates. It is simply the way it is and not necessarily a snub to the Green Party. The Bloc Quebecois was not there either and are on the same footing as the Green Party so that would indicate even handedness.

You are catching on cyber, like TFSAs are only for the wealthy as spoken by Trudeau, Mulcair and the media. No facts or context needed there, simply let the uninformed voter latch on to what they want to hear.

I appreciate what you say Reefer, your points are valid but dont you think it is wrong to pick worst case scenarios on everything? I personally plan to put up 10 to 15 kw of solar next year or year after and have dismissed wind for the time being in my own plans. So i am not here simply to attack every idea, but i have rational as it applies to my personal life. Wind turbines are far from failure proof and still arent really viable, have done a small bit of service work related to wind farms so get some of that feedback from guys that work all the time there. There is a lot if resources going into a mill, tons of steel, steel mills (massive polluters correct?), open pit mines to get the iron ore (bad for environment), and so on. Solar is less concern but lots of plastic so lots of oil, and oil is bad. Batteries, yes i want them to succeed on that front to compliment my solar plans but you have limited specialty metals available sourced from small Asian countries that requires mining/exploitation of a countries resources, dominance by a large multinational in pursuit of that resource. You see where i am going here? As a layman and without looking at massive studies i am simply speculating that the bulk if the concerns people rsise now based on our present energy model will simply become the same issues in the green movement. I say ignore any kind of manifesto and simply let things evolve, i beleive people are smart and i cant argue people who think everyone in a position of power is corrupt or big companies only have themselves in mind. Ive worked for Siemens and Westinghouse and to say they are less likely to protect the environment is false. Off track here. Regarding nuclear, we are told the end is nigh so how can nuclear waste be worse than nothing at all. Its like having your purse in your car that is on fire but saying you wont smash the window. Well is the car on fire or not? I know my decision. But being an alarmist on everything does not help because not a single thing in this world will get done. People are evil, corporations are evil. Yes nuclear plants are complex but we are building the largest potash mine in the world in a place in part of the world no one heard of. We have a carbon capture facility that is being considered a world model by some. You can take the position that a mine costs a lot, is complex and takes 6 years from start to finish so dont do it (as Suzuki aluded to re nuclear in video) or you can do it. And there us lots of nuclear operating now so your doomsday concerns are moot, if you have enough waste to destroy the world 3 times over does it matter if you can do it 6x. I do beleive in a lot of things, i simply say there us a different way to look at things. And that doing something different does not necessarily elimate all concerns from the initial method and may even raise concerns never thought of. Like in a 100% resource development free economy how is wealth generated to pay for the energy you create.

Not following what you mean by some 1987 legislation, potash industry was privatized in 1990. You have a document saying our government can sieze any mine at anytime? No need to do research, employees being out of work and on EI is enough. But i guess a guy working at the mines during these times such as myself is just offering opinion so we will leave it at that. The door is wide open for someone to put forth a well reasoned arguement on how high CIT is good for the economy. Should be easy because the Harper government is widely claimed to be idiots for this policy. http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/why-the-ndps-exact-plan-for-the-federal-corporate-tax-rate-matters/ This article does it better than a simple guy like myself, even has some charts. It does touch on one point of mine that higher CIT set by fed policy will impact provincial revenues so we are a little farther along in thinking it is not just MY "opinion" that Harper gov tax policy is a gift to the provincial governments, ndp and liberal alike.

Reefer, explain how you think nuclear could turn out even worse.

Trudeau may just as well walked over to Harper during the dabate, shook his hand and said "thank you sir, you did such a great job with the economy that we also agree we are in a great position to run large deficits for 3 more years as our platforms says" Is there any way possible to explain that the economy faired well. Many have been critical of everything but not suggested any way of how your preferred party would do better in that economic environment. What, higher CIT or lower, more deficit or less, more trade agreements or more isolationist. The Liberal party basically gave Harper a gold star by having the balls to announce more deficits. No doubt lots of people will be all infavor of more deficits - like Ontario where defits are at what, 10 years now, projected for a few more years "but any day now our deficit spending plan will turn this economy around".

I have to like TM for nailing JT to the wall. Just after JT attacked Harper for deficit spending TM says, "but you plan to run $10B a year for three years". Burn. And Harper something to the effect of "For seven years i have been coming to work and it has been either the banking crisis, housing bubble, world financial crisis and now China. Things in the world are still unsettled and so we must keep the budget balanced". Couldnt have summed things up better.

Mjs, you were the one that posted the chart and you dont understand what it means. As hitops says, it shows prices fluctuate. You want to see something interesting, dig up a graph going back 20 years and then make your judgement. You want correlation? What did the ndp do when prices were low, did they accept that margins were tight and make big reductions in taxes to get the economy rolling? No. They wanted "their fair share". And what about the price of potash after the huge spike? Do you think costs have gone up like labour, utilities, environmental etc that would make them correlate not too bad when the ndp was in charge? And what about when the price was high, did Brad Wall say lets take our fair share now? Opposition ndp was clamouring for it. And taxes were kept low so industry says "we had a spike and we did not get screwed over by the gov demanding higher taxes, we have a partner we can work with so we will invest more". Manitoba has been explored and there is potash 80 miles from our two largest mines. When potash was booming here and new mines starting up i can think of a reason why Manitoba wont be in the game.

Msj, as hitops. Potash competes. Big corporations dont simply set a price and rack in profit. Potash competes and when high taxes makes their cost of production higher than the competitor than they dont make sales. They therefore lay off workers beause of high taxes. In no way any different than the 3 4 or 5 lengthy posts already laid out on the subject. Really, this is probably a good time for all those in favor of high CIT to weigh in and explain how it will work. Heard Mulcair say 3 times in the debate tonight how Harper gov has "given Canadas largest corporations huge tax breaks" as if it was a bad thing. I have quite a few choice words for that rhetoric.

TimG, picture holding a balance scale with destruction of the planet on one side and storing spent waste from where it came on the other side. Yes, hard to be on board with the global warming crowd and deny there is huge money backing their agenda.

Yeah, i gotcha. You are basically getting the credit free as you are still doing what you normally would. And what you do is perfectly legit, i dont pass judgement on that. The layoffs of a company and throwing them onto government EI was a common pattern here in Sask during the NDP years. I know readers want to keep the partisan talk out of it but since people crave facts it is important to know this is fact and not "opinion". When royalties are too high, business taxes are too high under NDP gov in Sask so Potash was less profitable. People were laid off for two to four months or more and the NDP paid them in the form of EI. Thus the potash companies kept costs lower in an environment of high taxation. So how did us in Sask benefit from high business taxation? Not only higher personal taxes but next to nothing for economic development in the potash sector. Enter the right wing government with a beleif in low business taxation and potash has taken off, employment soaring and no one getting tossed onto EI by the potash industry. There is zero downside to low corporate taxes. The only question is how much money do you leave on the table by not taxing a little less or a little more once the taxes are set "low".

The discussion on Nuclear just puts into light the political big money bullshit that backs global warming. ALL of the problems claimed by global warming activists are resolved by Nuclear, but you cant have nuclear. We have a better plan, we call it "green energy", now we cant actually meet our energy needs with it, but until we figure out that hickup nuclear will remain off the table. In laymans terms, global warming is not a big enough deal to build nuclear because with nuclear we have to go to a uranium mine in northern Sask and put the spent fuel back underground. No, we prefer the complete desrtruction of the world ecosystem (according to global warming) to storing spent fuel in a cave.

MSJ, i follow what you say and in your model it sounds like you are not hiring to the limit you should be. You have the luxury to drop and pickup employees as your business desires and so the credit doesnt fit you well. What i mean is, if your business is profitable, you would hire people that puts you above the $15,000 cap and put them to work and not worry about the credit you leave behind. That $2200 credit could be replaced by $4000 profit in one month if you kept on staff that one guy you pay $25/hr, costs you $35/hr and charge out at $60/hr. And if you had one more guy over that whole year (you cannot employee half an employee full time) then it becomes $48,000 more profit vs keeping one employee iff payroll to trigger credit This is why i say it would be stupid to not hire or lay a person off solely for the credit. If you dont have the work for him in the first place then he should not likely be on your payroll because you are not running a business to pay out for no gain. I expect that there is the odd case where a business is fluttering on the line, but in reality making a decision solely to trigger the credit would be a bad premise. I am sure an out right credit would work great but the reality is that when ever you make a cut off point then something falls in that grey area of the cutoff. The intent of the credit is to help small businesses so that dictates a cutoff point.

Cyber, your query is as the title of this thread and is a valid question. And you have looked up the definitions of "small" and "large" corporations and you know there is no definition in a discussion on CIT that allows one to only speak to the top 60, the ones with the most cash on hand, or the lowest debt to asset ratio, etc on this matter. People are employed by owners of a company that pays the employee for their time. This cycle will continue as long as the company is making a profit. And, myself as a business owner, will employee more people and generate more wealth in the economy as long as i can create a profit that makes it worth my risk. This is how i become the top 1% in Canada, i take a risk, mortgage my house, start a business. If i am good with a good plan then my business will grow, and it may grow into a small corp, and i may grow it into a large corp and as i grow the economy does well and you pay lower taxes (unless the government pisses money away on spending programs). Im on my way to the top 1% because i took the risk and had everything going my way. At at anytime i can loose it for reasons too numerous to mention, this is why i want profit for my risk. How can my profit be impacted that forces me to stop growing, down sizing, disappearing completely? 1) new competitor with better/cheaper idea 2) my product no longer needed (whale blubber for lubrication maybe) 3) higher cost of labor 4) higher cost of raw material (whales are scarce) 5) higher utility costs 6) down turn in economy (my blubber still needed but less machines in operation) 7) higher taxes These all determine whether i keep people employed or lay them off and let the government support them (and of course that means the peoplle still working are the ones paying that bill). There are a number of things i can adapt to as a smart business guy like seeing whale blubber is becoming obsolete, or bring new technology in to lower my labor costs. But high taxes and a recession i dont have much say in. And if they hit at once it could be enough to say all the risks are no longer worth the little profit and everyone in my employ is going to be looking for work in a recession. Low CIT is a factor in whether i decide to take the risk no one else will and employ people or let the government look after them. The higher the CIT the lower my profit, the lower my appetite for risk.

NDP is dead set against it, had that NDP policy very clearly outlined in Saskatchewan when they were in power. Would have been good but ndp has never been about generating and growing an economy, simply pulling out what it can to survive. Now everyone is against it because Fukushima so not likely to get an appoval on that anytime soon. After all, you have to store the waste which seems to be an unsolvable issue because there is always some group opposed to it.

Not Yet, applying a 2% tax to companies exporting jobs to China has merit - interesting thought. It is kind of an isolationist view but i do beleive something along that lines could help create incentive to invest at home. It would effect businesses from the small corporations to the mega ones but it is what it is. Government could add some pre-qualifications to it that would help smaller corps avoid the tax to aid them in their endeavours. A small business needs every edge it can to get going and outsourcing to China is likely the only option but a much larger business can better have the means to source or establish supply locally. It may take investment to do so but a company could weigh whether better to pay 2% or invest at home instead.

Interesting mjs, so i read the terms of this credit and find that if you are owner of a business with 20 employees paid $50,000 each to push this job credit to its limit you think that is in your best interests to lay off your staff. Stupidity is certainly the correct term that comes to mind but you applied to the wrong entity. So your business sense tells you all you need to do is hang an "open" sign on a door and money just rolls in. Guess thinking like that is where the beleif that government can set the CIT at as high a level as desired comes from. Re-read the act and explain your theory on laying off your workforce.

My views also Springer. And i voted Chretien once, ndp years ago, cant say if i even voted for Harper first term, probably. But as i learn more this is the same thoughts i have. Another thing to remember is that once times are better and deficits stop everyone seems to think it will be all OK. No, the national debt is still there and as interest rates rise, and will, that has to be dealt with. We are already saddling our kids with our debt we rack up today. How much debt does everyone plan to pile on their kids to pay on for the next 20 years or more. Yeah, its fine to say lets borrow and spend more as long as it is your kids paying the bill and not you. But lets not consider that when we talk about borrowing more money fof more initiatives and heaven forbid anyone mentions ANY SPENDING CUT, because my kids will be there to deal with that bill so lets not cut now.

Cyber, you have been conditioned to think that a 'large corporation' is this evil empire like Sobeys, Apple, Sony, pick your name. I am saying you first need to understand the definition of a 'large corporation' as per the tax code as i have already laid out previously. Must have been in the thread with something to do with not voting for Harper because of fiscal record. I bet most 'large corporations' as per the Canadian tax code you will never hear of and there are a bunch with "head offices" within your area of whatever province you are in. So, you have a "large corporation" with 200 employees, all are share holders, all want to either grow and expand or stay same and take home a bigger pay cheque. Regardless of which avenue is followed, that money stays close to home. And that happens everywhere. Sure, you can keep thinking "large corporations" all have off shore accounts or you could learn and understand the true definition of a "large corporation" and everything i say about low CIT will come into focus. Even my statement that the Harper Gov setting a low CIT is a gift to the provincial governments. Because you will understand that each provincial government has many "large corporations" with head offices in that province and the provincial government has more tax policy freedom then if the Hatper gov set CIT at the highest level of all G7 countries. This is not right wing BS i am spewing, all you need to do is look up the definition of a large corporation and you will see. I will say this, the media, ndp and liberals want to keep alive what the perception of a large corporation is. Notice how everyone is quick to support any "small business" initiative. You understand there is perhaps about $10M of net worth between the beloved small business becoming the full blown and hated "large corporation".

Fair enough. No comment on the trickle down economics topic that is on topic, do you understand now how low CIT enables more profit to be held by a company and therefore that company will invest it based on market signals. This applies to every company from the massive corporations to the private business owner running a printing shop in his basement hoping to get a new printer to expand his business if only he never had to pay as much taxes.

I watched it Springer, i had seen the portion on the gmo debate on a farm forum, yeah, we discuss these things and have our views and opinions on monopolies and such and where things are at - have as much and may be more riding on this issue then people have voicing opinions. Suffice it say, Suzuki in this video sums up my opinion very well when he says gmos are bad and then a different aspect of gmo is discussed and he says, oh that is good then. The typical discussion starts with all gmos are bad, then you get into details of clarifying, classifying and morality and pretty soon it ends with some gmos are good. So, as stated previously, it is best for me to stay out of the discussion. I can dispel some myths and argue some points but best to take a pass on that whole topic.

Fair enough toadbrother, should i say liberal/ndp/democrat to be more inclusive. Regarding people on life support, where exactly do you draw the line. Is your opinion that no one able to live without life support should not be put on life support to begin with and so avoid the term "suicide someone else" because they have already passed on, or is it your position that person should be kept on machines indefinitely, and as their condition degrades we should add more machine and technology, and when that fails we can blame the health care system for not doing enough or not having the funding to provide the nextmlevel of technology to keep that person on life support. Ultimately the goal is to never have to make that big decision. I guess i dont see it as killing some off when one has already done everything WITHIN REASON (your definition added here) to extend their life already. Kind of like you cant kill someone who is already dead. But no doubt technology will evolve to the point where a heart beat is no longer required and only brain synapses firing will define "life", but where do you stand now.

Resource export based economy spoken as a bad thing, never ever thought i would hear that in my lifetime. Where exactly do you think wealth originates? Do you think you simply sit down one day and decide you will print off a bunch of dollar bills, create carbon credits in cyber space, manufacture a bunch of micro chips who sells them to a company putting them in a box who sells them to the end user who generated his wealth by, umm printing dollar bills must be the theory.

Well, you said it is wrong and cannot justify your position. I guess more accurate to say that is your opinion and is irrelevant. Therefore, after already explaining an example of how trickle down economics work in my personal life and your response is "hasnt worked, doesnt work". No point going further, is there? Dont know how else to say it. When our business is doing well, we hire more people, expand, create more opportunities, the owners/shareholders are making more money, buying houses, enjoying more recreational spending and such. Opposite is that when companies get squeezed on profit margin they have to raise the price of the product or go out of business. The whole trickle down of companies going out of business, less workers, more unemployed, higher taxes because fewer workers. Same thought process i wrote earlier that seems self evident but you are clearly looking for a full paper to document all claims of "my opinion" and i am not prepared to invest my time here to create one. So, i guess you have a win on this topic eh?