Tony Hladun

Thanks for saying what I just said.

CdnFox, you're right that Ottawa wants to get to people directly. The cities desperately want and need money and since there are no Constitutional rules Ottawa can offer the cities money but still have it look like Ottawa dollars. It also helps that Ottawa can run deficits (print money) so the cities are very obliging participants. With the Provinces there are Constitutional rules that impose a layer between Ottawa and the people. Ottawa doesn't get votes and control if it looks like it's Provincial money. Also the Provinces can't "print" money so they run into debt problems. (And I know it's the BOC that prints the money, but look who appoints the BOC Board..you dance with those that brung you.) Canadian Confederation is failing. Confederation hasn't worked recently because Provinces have different economies and populations (MP's elected). Ottawa is staging a power grab and will we like the result?

CdnFox, it certainly depends on the areas you pick and I was looking at this map. https://electionsanddemocracy.ca/sites/default/files/ERMap_44.jpg There appears to be more than fifty seats in the three windows for the cities. The cities by themselves may not be a majority but they're a big piece of the total. There's enough anger in this Federal Government and the fact that Provinces do have Constitutional rights that, when upheld by the Courts, are ignored by Ottawa that my proposition may not be all that paranoid.

To form the government in Canada you need the votes of three cities...Vancouver, Toronto (GTA) and Montreal. The Liberals have learned this and they've outflanked the Provinces by dealing directly with the cities. Even here in Alberta the Mayors of Calgary and Edmonton are left leaning (LIberal) and Ottawa is using its housing policy to cut the Provincial Government out. Forget the Constitutional split of Federal and Provincial powers by creating a Federal to Municipal power structure with the PM in control. Putin and Xi would be proud of Trudeau (well his Liberal handlers at least).

I'm surprised no one here has said anything. Is it a case of China wanting to know what their worst enemy is thinking? Is it payment for something? How about some conspiracy theories.

The past is the past. The developed world wanted ever increasing living standards and the rest of the world wanted to be like the developed countries. I'm talking about today and looking at what is best for Canada in the reality of today. Righteous poverty won't sell to Canadians.

It's the world, mainly the large emitters, that determine global CO2 emissions. What Canada does has no significant impact on global events. Today globally we use more oil than ever...101 million barrels a day. What Canada can decide is whether it wishes to face the future as a rich or poor nation. We're facing catastrophic events and we need resources to deal with them. By crippling our economy we only make matters worse for ourselves and we save nothing. So we need to look at what other countries are actually DOING, not preaching about, and act accordingly. For example, we should commit to match the annual percentage reduction of GHG emissions of the USA, China and India. We should commit to do our share but we should not shoot ourselves in both feet.

There are three factors that have stifled growth: 1. We're a federation of provinces with populations ranging from 145k to 14 million. Besides Ontario and Quebec the other provinces don't count and are treated like colonies. Capital investment is sucked to the middle. 2. Toronto is close to Detroit and not just by proximity. Canada pours money into a dying auto industry and the international car companies milk the largess. Immigration buoys the Ontario economy but mainly with low paying jobs. 3. Quebec always has to get a special deal. In their defence, French culture isn't about cut-throat competition, but capital is drained into projects to get Quebec votes. So Canada is a very economically dysfunctional country. Equalization is supposed to make everyone equal, but when everyone is equal then everyone is poor. When Federal Liberals came in I remember one year where the reduction of capital investment in Alberta due to Liberal policies equaled the total annual capital investment in Quebec. Lastly, we're now a joke in the eyes of the rest of the world so there's little outside investment. We've committed to carbon reduction which is a high-cost endeavour. The floods in Nova Scotia may be caused by global warming, but that is because the world is using a record 101 million barrels of oil a day and not by Fort McMurray. The world has to solve global warming, but I'm afraid that's not going to happen. So a strong economy is our best defense to deal with catastrophe and transition. Righteous poverty won't get us anywhere.

Trudeau escapes to Kyiv because it's safer there. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

CdnFox, you raised the point on how magnamus Ontario was so I pointed out that Ontario has been in the trough for a long time. As I mentioned above the resources do belong to AB. At this point rave on, I'm done.

No, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/natural-resources-transfer-acts-1930

CdnFox, before you tell us too much on how Ontario has suffered remember that Ottawa played a huge role in building the nuclear reactors in Ontario that now allow you to crow about low carbon. Read page 14 of this document https://canteach.candu.org/Content Library/19930101.pdf. Now Ottawa is pouring billions of dollars into Ontario for EV's. The chances of Ontario competing in the global EV market is just a hope and a dream. But lets say everyone in Ontario gets a free EV, where will the electricity you need come from? Will Ottawa build you more nuclear plants?

The problem is including resource revenues in Equalization calculations. Resources belong to AB (and BC, SK, NL) and so to include them as Equalization capacity (a totally arbitrary calculation), even at the 50% level, is punitive. Yes the personal tax structure at the federal level is the same, but that's not the point. And now with the Feds taking the money they want AB to kill its main industry as well. An analogy of what the draining payments of Equalization are like would be to have ON add the capital gains in Toronto property to their calculation and then see what happens. The resource provinces are being treated as colonies and their wealth is being stripped by the central Canada power axis.

It's been a few days and I've given this some thought. To be clear, I believe in inequality. here's why I do. As I said, if everyone is equal then everyone is poor. What happens then, and communist countries have shown this over and over again, is corruption takes over. There is no market discipline...no rules to the game. In the end the poor just get more poor because no one has the incentive to create wealth because it must be just stolen. Venezuela has oil riches greater than Canada and just look at what socialism (equality) has done to them. With inequality, a few people/companies create wealth. Poor people who work hard succeed and gain wealth as well. The leader of Singapore said they have two resources, people and hard work, and with that they have become successful. So making Alberta poor with Equalization will not make Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes rich...we will all just be poor. I have a saying that goes; if you want people to have nothing then you give them everything and if you want them to have everything then you give them nothing.

You need to understand the difference between control and exploitation versus letting people and provinces excel at their strengths.

Three things to consider: Canada is an Ontario/Quebec axis of power with the rest of the provinces treated as colonies. We're not a confederation any more. (Maybe we never were.) The concepts of equality (Equalization, wokeism and socialism) try to make everyone equal. When everyone is equal history has taught us that then everyone is poor. Socialism is intellectually very attractive but it has just one fault...it doesn't work. We're lazy and we want.

When the CBC shows us a house buyer it's a young immigrant family with four children. Those are probably not the norm. Someone who buys a $700k house is probably selling a $700k house that's paid for. I used to joke with my neighbour that we should make ourselves billionaires...we'd sell our houses to each other for a billion dollars and then we could go around saying we're each worth a billion dollars. The price of a house is really an admission ticket to a certain wealth strata. Yes there aren't enough cheap houses but that's in Toronto and Vancouver. There are plenty of places in Canada where house prices are much more reasonable, but people need to be willing to live there. In 1974 I left Toronto because houses cost $50k and as a graduate engineer I only made $10k. So my wife and I moved to Calgary and bought a house for $27k. If we're not going to an office why do we need to be in a major city? But governments need to recognize this and help build smaller communities. The real measure of housing health is not the price but it is the number of houses sold. There will always be corporate and government transfers that pay whatever is necessary. When sales are few this has an effect of propping up prices. All that said, the price of an average house is 40% of the average family income divided by the interest rate. The near zero interest rates (and QE) have created horrific asset bubbles. Governments that wring their hands and say how they'll fix it are actually the creators of this problem. In the meantime we're sliding on ice and when the mortgages need to be renewed, then we'll find out what will really happen.

Today Conservative ideology does not appeal to voters. People want something for nothing and that is how they vote. A while back I posted this video with a few suggestions for Conservatives. This approach might not get them elected, nothing might, but at least they can have responsibility and integrity.

A friend sent me the following and it's an excellent explanation of why the left/socialism does, and continuously hasn't, worked.

The lack of information here leaves one with fear and conspiracy theories. Before they shoot the objects down, why don't the jets do a flyby and tell us what they see? Are US pilots so dumb that they can't recognize an object? Take a picture with a smartphone! This is fear mongering by our governments at the highest level. As he says in this clip

When my wife and I got our shots, flu in her case and Covid in mine, within several days she got the flu and I got Covid. So here is something we might all need to consider. It takes about 2 weeks for the shots to become effective. The side effects of the shots are like mild, or more severe, versions of what the shot is for and they occur quickly after the shot. In other words, after the shot is your immune system compromised trying to build up resistance so exposure to the virus might tip you into the disease. So it may be true when the doctors say you can't get Covid from the shot, but if you're exposed to the virus when you've got shot side effects are you in danger? Should we be quarantined for 2 weeks after our shots? Is giving people shots when the flu is rampant only adding to the problem?

The only hope we have is that, like most government initiatives, in the end nothing will happen. Reality has a way of taking over. Germany, the climate change poster child, has detained Greta at a coal mine site reopening. Right now it's every country for themselves and the devil take the hindmost. Canada is a bad example to use because of the world's four largest oil producers we're the only ones with carbon taxes and a federal government determined to kill the oil industry...we're not reality.

You misunderstand. It's not the top 10% to the lowest 10% I'm talking about (inequality) but it's the average (equality...if everyone were equal) that I'm referring to.

These conversations, as normal, wander all over the place. To me the main point is Canada is going backwards in just about every area. In our obsession to make everyone equal with programs like Equalization we are moving to the lowest common denominator. If we made everyone in the world equal then we would all be poor.

Calgary Herald; This is a glimpse at their respective ratios of health-care bureaucrats to populations: Canada has one healthcare administrator for every 1,415 citizens. Germany: one healthcare administrator for every 15,545. There's the problem and what's going on now will only make it worse. This applies to other government functions as well. The Feds and every Province have to get an oar in. Want to get something done...make it the responsibility of one person. Want nothing done...make a committee.