I am Groot

Our GDP per capita was lower last year than it was in 2018 and is expected to decline over the next two years. https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/gdp-per-capita https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-why-gdp-per-capita-is-becoming-the-indicator-to-watch/

Afaik Poilievre has largely ignored the concerns of much of his base about most culture issues. He'll toss off a sentence here and there, but most of his attention has been on the economy, housing, budget deficits, etc. If he wanted to please his base he'd talk more about crime and the deplorable state of our military. I haven't heard him say one word about 'homos' Climate change, on the other hand, is seeming more and more like an impossible mess. Nothing we do, however much we strive to bankrupt ourselves over it, is going to make an iota of difference. The increasing cost of energy, as well as high taxes, have a lot to do with poor productivity, though. And this government has been on the wrong side of both issues. Note that the productivity falls started the year Trudeau took office. Coincidence?

You have a one-track mind. Everyone has been doing that. Why is it we're the only ones whose productivity is going down? And yet if you'd read the article it said that if Canada's productivity had risen at the same rate as the Americans' over the last several years it would be up by more than 8% today. Why? edit: the article in question not posted to this topic.

The problem I have with immigration (aside from numbers) is that latter group. I believe Capitalism takes care of jobs people don't want to do quite adequately. All bringing in unskilled people does is perpetuate the low pay for those jobs. It also probably has something to do with our productivity no longer increasing at a tiny rate but actually decreasing for 11 of the past 12 quarters.

What you missed out of that, is, I suspect, that it was more a commentary on your "The immigrants will be just fine, the rest of Canadians will be just fine too" and TSS 'Canada will be all right". Because, you see, I'm not nearly as confident of that as you two appear to be. Risk assessment is in my nature. And just as I could foresee trouble with rising interest rates so too can I foresee bringing in hundreds of thousands of people, many of them unskilled, every year in the face of whatever the hell AI is going to do the labour market over the next decade or more could lead to grave trouble. People joke about Canadians' easygoing nature, about how passive and accepting we are of things when they go wrong. And to an extent, that's almost a fault. But people from our major source countries are NOT like that. And if they feel they've come here only to see their hopes smashed they're going to be a very unhappy bunch of people. The Liberals lowered the express entry cutoff number from 413 to 75 last year, the lowest it's ever been, basically making a mockery out of the very idea that we're screening for 'skilled' immigrants. And I just can't see how bringing over massive amounts of unskilled people every year in order to keep wages low in the restaurant and hotel industries as housing (and rental) prices shoot through the roof is going to lead to peace and happiness. Even without AI aggravating the situation. I realize they've raised the cutoff score for this year, but it's clear the priority of this government is not quality but quantity, and that doesn't speak well for how much effort we're putting in to select the best and brightest.

If it's ON native land then give it back and get the f*ck out. If it's not, then shut the f*ck up.

You know, when I used to warn that all the borrowing was going to lead to inflation all the Liberals and lefties laughed. Well, I worked hard and gave up a number of purchases to get my mortgage paid off seven years early, and finished last year. I'm the one laughing now while all the people who couldn't be bothered to prepare for a fairly easy-to-foresee future are sweating about whether they'll have to give up their homes.

The mantra of the Left "Don't worry, be happy!"

Projected. Based upon current culture and values. Suppose as the population gets smaller and workers get rarer they become more valuable, get paid more. Suppose housing becomes way cheaper too since there are an excess of houses. Neither of these seems at all unlikely results from a dwindling population. Perhaps then young couples would decide to have more children since they can now afford decent houses and yards in which to raise them.

A number of groups do better than whites. Namely, those who put a high value on maintaining a two-parent family, and on those parents putting a deal of effort into their childrens' education. Not all groups do. Blacks do not, as a rule. Which is the principal reason (not racism) that they fail. Not just in the US, but in Canada, and in the UK. Other groups arrive, 1st generation immigrants living in or near poverty, and then boost their children up into the middle classes. Blacks don't seem able to do this.

I make a statement of fact. You respond with anger and vitriol. I post incontrovertible evidence that what I said was simple truth, using government of Canada cites. And your response is to ignore them and continue raging. I'm not sure what happened in your life to make you such a bitter, angry person, but it's obviously reached the point where, assuming you were ever capable of it, you can no longer rationally discuss any topic that transgresses the boundaries of your ideological fixations.

Is that your apology? Are you asking why we shouldn't consider immigrants as 'victims' of our past racism?

Nearly 6,264,800 people identified themselves as a member of a visible minority group. They represented 19.1% of the total population. Of these visible minorities, 30.9% were born in Canada and 65.1% were born outside the country and came to live in Canada as immigrants. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011001-eng.cfm Second generation includes individuals who were born in Canada and had at least one parent born outside Canada. In 2011, this group consisted of just over 5,702,700 people, representing 17.4% of the total population. For just over half (54.8%) of them, both parents were born outside Canada. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011003_2-eng.cfm Blacks had the second largest proportion of Canadian-born among all visible minority groups, 43.2%. Among Blacks, 8.9% were third generation or more https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2013/statcan/CS99-010-2011-1-eng.pdf

Of course, I disgust you! I'm a monster and don't have any humanity! All for the crime of disagreeing with you! And this is why there has never in history been a left wing government that didn't resort to totalitarianism and repression. You guys are such zealots about what you believe to be the runway to utopia that you dismiss anyone who disagrees as evil incarnate. It's been that way since Marx. And that's the kind of attitude, dismissing the humanity and value of those you disagree with that makes it so easy for you to commit extreme acts of violence against them. Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, or their more updated incarnations like Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, or Kim Jong Un are all from the same mold. And you don't even have their depth. You're just a bit player, one of the desperately eager helpful fools trying to find meaning in your life.

There are a lot more lurkers than regular posters.

Things about Sir John A MacDonald that rarely make it into the press. Given that he died in 1891, the facts of Sir John A. Macdonald’s life are unchangeable. The story of his life, however, has changed dramatically. For most of Canada’s history, Macdonald was considered a nation-builder worthy of celebration and veneration. Today he is a war criminal, at least to hear some tell it. But a proper and balanced consideration of Macdonald’s life reveals that, through his own actions and policies, Canada’s first prime minister was directly and deliberately responsible for saving the lives of untold numbers of Indigenous people. Given the temper of our times, this is not likely to be a popular notion. But that does not make it any less true. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/greg-piasetzki-john-a-macdonald-saved-more-indigenous-lives-than-any-other-prime-minister

Uhm, because as we know full well nowadays, and was driven home heavily during covid, people who live in large buildings and constantly comingle are far more vulnerable to communicable diseases. I have yet to see any comparison of the death rate between natives in residential schools vs those on reserves or for white groups that lived together such as in orphanages, prisons or even ordinary boarding schools. And it is also known that natives had no genetic immunity from a number of diseases Europeans brought over from Europe. Particularly TB. There are no mass graves. There are cemeteries with unmarked graves, in many cases because wooden grave markers tended to be used back in the day and they simply didn't survive to today. Well, to begin with, my history has nothing to do with what happened back in the day as my family weren't even here. Second, comparing what happened with residential schools to the holocaust is an obscene way to try to downplay the Holocaust. Too bad you don't have enough humanity in yourself to not try to use that as a handy way of scoring points on someone who merely disagreed with you.

https://www.aei.org/politics-and-public-opinion/harvard-faculty-dont-want-dissonance/ https://c2cjournal.ca/2022/11/now-hiring-by-skin-colour-the-university-of-calgarys-inclusion-policy-that-discriminates-against-nearly-everyone/ https://www.newsweek.com/we-have-data-prove-it-universities-are-hostile-conservatives-opinion-1573551 https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/yes-universities-discriminate-against-conservative-scholars/ And yet here you are constantly howling and swinging your arms around at everyone.

How could I? It's not like a week goes by when I don't read something about it in the papers or see something about it on TV. I'm pretty sure I know a considerable amount about it that you don't. For example, are you aware that providing schools was a requirement of the treaties Canada signed? That native participation was entirely voluntary except during a 30 year period from 1920 to 1951? That the death rate at residential schools is largely attributed to communicable diseases that Canada could not treat and had no idea how to prevent? That the federal government worked very hard to ensure smallpox vaccinations went out to every native, and every reservation?

The only group there that can really claim to be some kind of victims are indigenous people. The numbers of the other racial groups in Canada during almost its entire history numbered in mere thousands. Only a tiny sliver of the existing visible minority population can trace their presence in Canada back beyond the 1980s. So tell me how the following 'repairs the damage'. Giving an immigrant who shot someone in a robbery a lighter sentence. Giving the child of an immigrant an advantage in government hiring, and in university admittance. Tearing down statues of the founders of Canada, as well as the monarch, when nothing can be directly traced to them in terms of damage to minority populations.

You know, I can't help noticing in the above sanctimonious rant that you never actually said anything that contradicted what he said. Certainly, the statistics from polls taken of university professors and administrators show an enormous lopsidedness in terms of progressives/liberals/conservatives employed there. But perhaps that simply isn't an issue to you. YOu don't understand why anyone would be concerned. After all, it's your 'team' that is winning there, right? Nothing wrong with that. Why would anyone be bothered!? And by the way, the only one who seems to keep getting emotional about these discussions is - you.

I"m not going to argue about racism in the US but Canada has never treated Aboriginals as 'monsters'. In fact, on the formation of the Northwest Mounted Police, who were sent out into the West to maintain order the prime minister ordered that natives and whites were to be treated exactly alike. Has that always happened? Certainly not, but it is what was laid down by the government of the day. Not in Canada. Even in the US there are many aspects to the sentencing of criminals that could lead to certain types of minorities getting harsher sentences, including their previous criminal history, whether they were an otherwises law-abiding citizen with a job and family, etc. Blacks would tend to do worse under such circumstances than whites or asians. And even if that were the case historically that is no reason to deliberately give natives and blacks lower sentences than whites or Asians TODAY. You keep saying that as if it means anything. In fact, it is white liberals who are the FIRST to make excuses for such things. Just white college-educated liberals were demanding the police be defunded or fewer police in black areas but the blacks in those areas were completely opposed to this. The decisions and excuses white liberals make for minorities are not necessarily greeted with respect by those minorities. You cannot say that certain people are monsters and then pretend that you will respect them, their rights, and treat them the way you would treat others. If you don't understand that then you're lying to yourself. Calling them monsters implies just such a behavior.

And at what level? You'll get orders coming down from above, FROM the military, but you do not know how they got them or what political interference informed their decision-making. Yes, our new warships are vastly more expensive than they were supposed to be and way behind schedule. They also fail to meet the original specifications for the RFP in rather substantial ways. Just to start with, only proven designs were to be submitted. These were not proven designs as they'd never been built before. The ships, according to an Australian study, do not meet the speed and range requirement as set out in the RFP either.

Record immigration is driving record emissions. Surprise! “Ottawa’s decision to open the immigration floodgates is creating a growing asset-liability mismatch when it comes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,” the report said. The federal government is targeting a reduction in annual GHG emissions to approximately 440 million tons by 2030, it noted. “After slowly converging on this goal for most of the past decade, we estimate that a brutal reversal is now taking place,” NBF said. https://www.investmentexecutive.com/news/research-and-markets/record-immigration-driving-record-emissions-nbf/

That is one of the most naive statements I've ever seen written here. You really think the politicians just leave it up to the military to buy what they want? You think it's a coincidence the winning bidders seem to usually have facilities/plants in government ridings? I have a vague memory of a truck the military wound up buying failing testing repeatedly at the military's testing facility. The government (Mulroney, I believe) shut down the testing facility and sent the truck to a private sector American facility where (Surprise!) it passed and was then purchased. Can't remember but it might have been the Iltis...