turningrite

If you read my comments on immigration, you'd realize that I too believe that immigration reform is urgently required, especially to curb dependency, which drains public coffers.

1.) It appear that some of our cities are experiencing an upsurge in violence as well. Gang activity in particular has become a growing problem in Canada and much of it emerges in immigrant populations. There are many places in the U.S. that are as safe as Canada, as my sister who lives in a comfortable suburb of a large and prosperous U.S. city routinely points out. Crime in the U.S., like here, is really a matter of particular location. There may be more dodgy locations in the U.S. than here, but there are lots of safe places as well. And if you think our safety net still actually exists in any substantive form, I'd counter that you're either romantic or naive. We've replaced it with a layered subsidy system that serves an entrenched underclass. If a middle class taxpaying citizen becomes seriously ill or disabled or otherwise falls on hard times, they'll find out how vast the cracks in our vaunted safety net have become. Too many Canadians are smug about our system. Both the average and maximum disability payments received under the American Social Security system exceed the corresponding CPP-D levels in this country, and that's before considering the impact of the currency exchange and generally lower cost of living in the U.S., both of which render the American system much more generous than ours. As for natural disasters, have you watched coverage of the Ottawa-Gatineau tornado this weekend? Natural disasters are so random that to attribute them to a particular country seems, well, bizarre. 2.) The U.S. isn't much of a draw anymore? According to a 2017 World Economic Forum study, the U.S. clearly remains the preferred destination for immigrants from around the world. (See link below.) Canada ranks third in the study, behind Germany, effectively tied with the U.K. and France and just ahead of Australia, but the percentage who prefer the U.S. is equal to the combined rankings of the next four countries behind it on the list. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/these-are-the-countries-migrants-want-to-move-to/ 3.) I agree with you on this. And it is this fact that I believe is largely responsible for the growing concern among Canadians about high immigration levels.

The situation you point to is so exceptional as to render your argument ridiculous. The nun in the story apparently belonged to a Monastic and/or cloistered order, a circumstance that's become exceedingly rare in the West. Were one to take your analogy further, you'd apparently approve of the notion that Muslim women who dress in fundamentalist garb be cloistered and hidden from public. As far as reality is concerned, when I attended Catholic schools in the late 50 and throughout much of the 60s I never encountered a nun who covered her face. Have you ever personally, encountered one? (I bet not.)

1.) Well, for the sake of social cohesion, a secularist requirement applicable to federally and provincially operated or regulated services, businesses and workplaces, is an eminently sensible idea. 2.) You're relying on a Wikipedia entry covering religious clothing extending back to the Middle Ages? Wow! That's stretching things. The only pictures that show nuns in any apparently modern context suggest that in the modern age (i.e. the past couple centuries) facial covering hasn't been a characteristic of the religious habits worn by nuns, at least in the West.

Ford will be fine as long as he sticks to bread-and-butter issues that seriously impact Ontario's fiscal circumstances. As such, his government's start, which has focused on bizarrely symbolic and essentially inconsequential issues like the sex-ed curriculum and the size of Toronto's city council, has been troublingly inauspicious. Substantive fiscal reform in this province will have to focus on the abysmal health care model, the rising costs and declining results of the education system and reining in social subsidies. These three sectors account for about 80 percent of provincial program spending. Oh, and I should also mention the need to rein in costs associated with the broader provincial public service, which has reportedly experienced wage and benefits gains over the past decade or more far out of proportion to the experience of most taxpaying private sector workers.

1.) The point is that most Canadians, including nuns, have realized that it's counter-productive to deliberately, even on religious grounds, separate themselves from society. Immigrants and minorities, would be best advised to heed this lesson. 2.) No, I'm wondering if you grew up in some kind of privileged Protestant enclave? Otherwise, you'd surely be aware that nuns never covered their faces in the days when they wore full habits. But I suspect you were simply misconstruing the situation to suit your argument.

Well, the health care cost related to seniors ($12K annually, on average) is quite easy to access, if you're looking for the number. The CMA has cited it relating to expressing its concerns about the need for increasing demand for senior health care services in this country. (Although you could easily have found this yourself, see citation below.) As for the all-in costs related to immigrants seniors, the math is fairly simple to do. There is some conjecture that seniors who enter Canada may be unhealthier than are native-born Canadian seniors but even if their longevity is lower than that of Canadians, a good percentage of whom now live into their mid-80s, the per capita costs associated with immigrant seniors would presumably be higher than the Canadian average. Anyway, you can do the math. I believe the $4B annual figure is generally accepted by most analysts. The Fraser Institute has estimated that the cumulative cost to Canadian taxpayers for each immigrant senior amounts to roughly $300K (in 2013 dollars), so each additional 20,000 cohort entails an unfunded liability of almost $6 billion dollars. As our already overburdened health care system continues to deteriorate and the population continues to age, can we afford this additional substantial stress on our system? I realize senior immigration is a LIb vote buying scheme, but in my view we should be very wary about it given its implications. https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/physicians-urge-ottawa-to-pay-another-21b-over-decade-for-seniors-health-care-1.4016130 https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/canadian-family-class-immigration

First of all, you appear not to have carefully read my post, which delineated between two different approaches to immigration, the first being the 'stepping stone' strategy and second being the 'citizenship of convenience' approach. The example I cited was noted as an illustration of the second case. But where the stepping stone issue is concerned, it's often reflects a deliberate and long-term family approach. I recall listening to a conversation between a couple of late middle-aged South Asian immigrants while enduring an interminable wait at a specialist's office a couple years ago. Both noted that all their children had left Canada after finishing school here, one stating that all her children were now living and prospering in the U.S. while the other was more circumspect about where his children had relocated, but my guess is that at least a couple likely ended up in the U.S. as well. Canadian status, education and work experience renders it much easier to live and work in the U.S. than is the case faced by those trying to get into the U.S. from the developing world. Canadian credentials are generally recognized at face value south of the border. I know this because I have a lot of relatives, including a sister, and friends who either live and work or have lived and worked there.

The operative word in your comment is "had" as nuns realized it was counterproductive to separate themselves from the broader society - which should serve as a lesson to those who seek to promote self-othering habits like wearing the niqab and burqa. But where did you grow up? Presumably, you never lived near a Catholic school or convent in this country. I attended separate Catholic schools until the 9th grade (after which they weren't publicly funded in Ontario at the time) and never saw a nun cover her face. They used to cover everything but their faces, presumably so their students could understand every facial twitch and scowl that intended to convey displeasure and/or admonition. They sometimes frowned and smiled as well. They never covered their mouths or noses nor did they refrain from expressing their opinions or interacting with the wider world. By the time I moved out of the separate school system the nuns were starting to experiment with modified habits, where some wore plain knee-length skirts and exposed their ears and hair. They joined the modern world. There were several nuns living In an apartment building in which I lived a few years ago and for a fairly lengthy period of time I had no idea for they were nuns, until another resident told me they were.

It is roughly $4B, and maybe higher. The figure was cited in a news article I read the other day. If we admit 20,000 immigrant seniors a year and each one lives for 16 to 20 years following arrival, we'll eventually have a cumulative population of 320,000 to 400,000 of these immigrants living in Canada at any given point in time. And as the Canadian Medical Association has pegged the annual per capita cost of providing public health care services to an average senior in Canada at $12K, the health care costs associated with this cohort will be $3.8B to $4.8B annually. The math isn't that difficult to figure out and the costs are borne heavily by taxpayers in the major immigrant receiving provinces, particularly Ontario, which already faces a fiscal crisis. Obviously, we can't afford this program.

I have friends who work or have worked at all three levels of government. It's my understanding that provincial salaries and benefits are by far the most generous. While municipal salary and benefits levels are all over the map, it's my understanding that these levels tend to fall below provincial government levels. I think these salaries and benefits should undergo comparison with private sector levels.

I'm from Ontario and live in Toronto. And I am personally quite aware of the deficiencies in our health care system and conscious of the shortcomings of our education system. If you live in Ontario, you seem to have much more confidence in these systems than do many of your co-citizens. A recent Toronto Star article indicated that confidence in the public education system is declining and the worsening problems in the health care system are widely acknowledged. (See links regarding these matters below.) I'm not proposing that we copy the American system. I'm suggesting that we look to other countries, like Taiwan and Switzerland, that more efficiently and at lower cost provide universal care and with greater efficiency than do we. I think we should consider a government-sponsored (i.e. "public option") insurance program funded by premiums but also permit private sector competition. The current system is a mess and simply can't be tinkered with for a fix. As for the restated deficit, I believe the PCs have argued that the auditor general's approach be adopted. Where did you get the idea that Ford's party doesn't want it? They might regret adopting it, but that's a different matter. Small measures will not resolve Ontario's massive fiscal problems. As I said previously, radical surgery is required. https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/06/27/satisfaction-with-schools-and-teachers-is-on-the-wane-u-of-t-survey-finds.html https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/now-more-than-ever-we-need-to-solve-ontarios-health-care-crisis-of-capacity/article37490512/

Where? I asked you how many people live in your city, town or hamlet and how many councillors serve your community. And I asked you how many people live in your provincial riding.The only response I can see is your petulant and rude retort that you "don't care" how I assess this matter. (But you're apparently quite willing to cast judgement on others, suggesting hypocrisy on your part.) I want to figure out how politically overserviced you are and how many tax dollars people in your neck of the woods are needlessly soaking up. Please copy and paste the relevant information if you have provided it elsewhere or simply provide it if you have not already done so.

Most published authors are critiqued. Where immigration is concerned, there's an industry that's become dependent on it, so rational criticism is often treated with disdain. So, it would be surprising were Collier, who works in this controversial field, not to face critics. On the other hand, he's respected enough to teach at Oxford and have been knighted by the Queen. Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

And old take? Huh? Some immigrants may only want to come to Canada, but a significant proportion now do so on a much more strategic basis. I believe that a fairly recent Stats Can study indicated that about one-third of immigrants leave Canada following their arrival, presumably most of these being the highly-touted skilled and highly employable immigrants our system is said to encourage, In fact, many of them have better options available to them elsewhere. Meanwhile, many of these immigrants sponsor less economically viable relatives to come to Canada, leaving an immigrant population that on the whole is less skilled and older than many of our leaders and opinion makers want us to believe to be the case. Reportedly, while about half of Toronto's residents are immigrants, about two-thirds of its seniors are immigrants. We should consider the implications of this. The 'stepping stone' immigration strategy isn't new, of course. Countless immigrants have for generations moved on to the U.S. after first arriving in Canada. My maternal grandfather's ancestors in fact did this, although the more prosperous branch of the family remained in Canada, which is likely somewhat different than most such cases nowadays. Another strategy that's emerged in recent years, however, which has particularly troubling implications for the country, is called "citizenship of convenience", whereby many immigrants stay here only so long as to acquire citizenship and in many cases to get family members into the country. A relative of mine who lives in the suburbs was startled when some new neighbours told her about a decade ago that this was precisely their plan. And in fact they moved to another country after obtaining citizenship and left an older couple, presumably sponsored relatives, living in the home the original immigrants had purchased upon arriving in Canada. My relative thought this scheme couldn't possibly be acceptable but I told her I believed it to be consistent with Canadian law and told her there was nothing she could do about it.

It would send a message that outside the home no woman could be compelled to participate in such a practice.

We restrict personal freedoms in many ways in our society on the premise of preventing potential or theoretical harm. To simply cherry pick issues that you appear to believe sustain your position doesn't adequately respond to the broader issue. In comparison to an issue like abortion, a restriction or prohibition on facial coverings would be so minor in comparison to the potential benefits, such as promoting gender equality, female dignity and integration, as well as preventing potential coercion, that imposing a secular regime in this regard seems eminently sensible. The European Court of Human Rights has reached this conclusion in upholding secular laws in countries under the court's jurisdiction. Those who come here who believe their personal religious freedoms and choices are absolutely necessary to their own personal concept of dignity have a much broader form of freedom available to them to sustain their beliefs - the freedom to leave. Personally, I believe secularism is the key to harmony and inclusion in a diverse society.

What a rant! Obviously, you don't care to answer my very relevant questions. In any case, you have made this about you (i.e. repeated use of the words 'I' and 'me' suggests that you think this is all about you). The real issue here is that the matter on which you're pontificating, the size and cost of Toronto's city council, has absolutely no real impact on you. It's not your tax dollars that are on the table here. So you voted for Ford. So what? I don't give a toss and if you're not prepared to compare apples with apples rather than oranges and inform me how of the number of constituents each councillor serves in your municipal ward in whatever city, town or hamlet you live, your contributions here are mainly irrelevant.

Well, your recipe seems to be based on decreasing revenues and tying expenditures to debt but promoting more infrastructure spending. I hate to tell you this, but this is a recipe for massive cuts. This is the conundrum Ford's government faces. Personally, I think we need to phase out most subsidy programs, particularly by introducing time limits on the receipt of social benefits and housing subsidies for employable people, introduce a "public option" health insurance scheme funded by premiums accompanied by permitting the sale of private health insurance, tying education funding and salaries to performance and contracting out public service administration as much as possible. I think these things are necessary to promote long-term fiscal stability for Ontario.

Thanks for clarifying this. So, now you can answer my previous questions: How many people live in the town or city in which you live and how many councillors serve these constituents? And how many people live in the provincial riding in which you live?

I don't buy your tautology, which seems intended to in a manipulative fashion counter secular rationalism. If something that's objectionable to many must be allowed because to do otherwise both removes choice and at the same time only theoretically fails to resolve repression, the moral as well as rational choice is to operate on the basis of causing the least harm. Reduction of harm in this context entails banning a practice that's both a representation and consequence of repression. After all, is affirming one person's supposed "freedom" sufficient to justify the simultaneous possibly of repression of another? Personally, as long as a single person might be saved from harm, I think not.

I think more radical surgery is required. And the transition needs to be completed quickly even though this will entail considerable pain. Infrastructure spending might not be the best idea at the present time, at least in the GTA, because the current construction boom is straining access to labour and materials and therefore the cost of building infrastructure at this time would likely be higher than under normal circumstances. And interest rates are predicted to rise, meaning that already stretched financial resources are going to become even more difficult to obtain. The situation is so bad that I can't help but think that this province is on the brink of collapse if something isn't quickly done to set the ship on a sustainable course.

My argument isn't emotional at all. I accept that I'll die, and likely sooner rather than later, without reasonable access to necessary health services. My plan is to pursue an assisted death when I believe I no longer enjoy a reasonably acceptable quality of life. I used to think of myself as a progressive, but the situation I've faced has caused me to rationally and clear-headedly examine Canada's redistributive ideology and in so doing I've lost all confidence in its legitimacy. Let people keep their own money rather than give it away in taxes to fund programs they will likely never themselves be able to access in any substantial fashion. Let people buy private health insurance and otherwise find ways to pay their own way. Let immigrants who can survive on their own into the country. The "safety net" is dead. The layered subsidy system which has replaced it merely serves an entrenched fraction of the population. As the British economist Sir Paul Collier has noted, large-scale immigration in advanced countries tends over time to undermine social cohesion. I'm merely a canary in this coal mine. I can assure you that many more will come to realize the futility of maintaining this system.

I think you either completely misunderstand my point or, alternatively, you're trying to misrepresent it. My point is that there are two general lines of argument favoring the niqab and burka and these two are logically opposed. One argument is based on so-called religious freedom and the other is based on the notion of fear and oppression whereby women have no choice but to wear these garments. So, which is it?

1.) I was happy to help. 2.) Obviously not? Surely you mean, 'in my opinion, obviously not', right? 3.) My bet is that my view is likely reflective of public opinion. That you don't seem to recognize the moral and ethical case here suggests a degree of desensitization on your part. Or is it partisan affiliation that shapes your perspective as you seem intent on providing cover for an intransigent government and bureaucracy?