Spiderfish

It happened to countless smaller communities across the prairies in Canada as well, with the shift from family farming to large industrial operations, and the overall change in scale of production and transportation of grain and livestock.

Whitewash the context? What would you call it? A speech? An introduction? A comment? A little off-the-cuff boxin' banter? Whatever you want to call it, you wouldn't hear it come out of Harpers mouth in public. Perhaps in all of your disappointment over the choice of words, you missed the point I was trying to make.

Correct. What would your take be if Harper let it fly during a public address?

Don't want to touch the question I asked? That's okay, it was somewhat rhetorical... I have a feeling I already know the answer.

Scandal?? Around Soudas? It took me 5 minutes of searching just to find the story. JT's remarks...front page stuff. I'm wondering what your take would be if it had been Harper that made the remarks instead of Trudeau.

I'd wager he didn't say it (nor would he) in the middle of a public address.

Soudas was using his position to influence a nomination race. If nothing had been done Harper would have been accused of promoting corruption.

Canada is set up differently than the US, provinces support each other through various means such as equalization programs. When the overall economy of the country is strong, it benefits all regions of Canada. I don't think we would see a great deal of decline or attrition of any major centers with the economy of the country in generally good health. If the economic health of the country was to decline however, I think this scenario could change.

I apologize if my comment came off brash, I know the regard to which you hold condescending tone. I am sure you have little tolerance for hypocrisy as well.

It could be argued that Winnipeg is currently going through this now. It used to be a major hub with it's central location being ideal for corporate head offices and was strong and vibrant industrially and commercially. With the steady increase in business and corporate taxes in Manitoba and other provinces to the West offering much more appealing business environment, it didn't take large companies long to catch on that the grass truly was greener on the other side. Winnipeg now has a very healthy and thriving civil service, but the business and corporate environment is basically stagnant.

Feel better now that you've gotten that off your chest? Maybe now you can start engaging in the discussion instead of the people, the victim thing is getting old.

Are you trying to convince BC, or yourself? And what about Canadians who aren't from that region, are they qualified to discuss the topic? I am Canadian, I think he makes a relevant point.

This may shed some light on the objectives of the program: http://www.leanadvisors.com/lean-success-stories/government/province-of-saskatchewan-adopt-a-culture-of-lean In summary, the Ministry’s focus is on providing value and the elimination of waste to: support our primary objective to create and maintain an unwavering focus on the patient; improve quality of care and safety of patients and staff; increase the effectiveness of our processes; increase customer satisfaction with our processes and the experiences of care; raise employee morale; increase productivity; lower costs; and, lead by example and share the journey with the entire provincial health sector. It may take awhile to see the full benefit, however efforts to date include: Over 1400 safety defects have been removed from the health system. The Children's Hospital of Saskatchewan Lean design process helped teams find more efficient ways of providing services, while improving the design and hospital experience for patients and families. The result was a 15.6% reduction of space required at a cost savings of approximately $30M. $4M has been saved this year through Lean improvements in inventory management of the provincial blood and plasma supply (a total of $14M since 2008). 3S Health provincial laundry services achieved 61% reduction of returned unused linen, 73% reduction of filling cart for delivery and several thousands in rewash savings. Through a staff scheduling improvement event, the Saskatoon Health Region anticipates annual savings of at least $4.4M once fully implemented. Operational efficiencies of $85 - $160M over 20 years will be obtained at the Moose Jaw Regional Hospital replacement by using Lean design. It's hard to know for sure at this point exactly how much benefit and efficiency the LEAN program will create, but it's nice to see a province taking a fresh approach in trying to increase efficiency within the health system. It's pretty obvious that provinces have had poor results increasing efficiency and satisfaction in the sytem using the standard old methods and approaches. Deloitte has summarized their perpsective of LEAN program as: "LEAN cannot be looked upon as another cost cutting initiative - instead it must be embraced as a fundamental shift in thinking that will allow an organization to more efficiently and effectively provide patient-centered care". I think a fundamental shift in thinking may be what is needed, established perspectives don't seem to be getting us anywhere with regards to gaining efficiencies in the system.

Albertan's have been voting right of center since the 1930's. This may be changing gradually, however I would certainly not consider this pattern typical of Canadian voting tendencies. The Wildrose has been growing in popularity, from taking just 6.8% of the vote in 2008 to 34% in 2012. Of course you can't count the PC's out, but they better figure out a way to turn the trend around...in a hurry. I think Redford's resignation is a good first step.

What are you typing on right now? If you despise it so much, why not just give it up? What does your fishing boat run on? There are a lot of benefits we can gain with the advancement of technology. We currently have the technology and ability to drastically reduce or even eliminate malnutrition in the world through GM foods, and the benefit of chlorine in drinking water has prevented the deaths of countless people due to cholera and other water-borne diseases. Yet there are many who call for the ban on GM foods, and refer to chlorine as "the devil's element".

That's not even in the realm of what I said, and you know it. edit to add: your contempt for rational discussion states your position perfectly.

Unfortunately, the "precautionary principle" is surely the least efficient way to advancement of knowledge and progress. It's important to be analytical in trying to measure the outcomes of actions, and I think we are progressively improving on this front. But it's simply irresponsible to impede progress at the expense of human potential and minimization of suffering because we can't disprove a potential negative outcome.

I think this will pretty much lock a Wildrose victory next election.

Attrition such as this is hardly the result of any recent mandate, this has been years in the making. We've seen the shit show that results from the Government trying to procure new military resources... look no further than subs, helicopters and jets for evidence of this. Another quote from the above MacLeans article:

I'm not sure we have any ships to spare, and the ones we do have may not make the trip. http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/navy-blues/

True, I likely would have done this if I was going to build but I bought off the shelf. I figured it would make more sense to buy a laptop installed with win 7 than to pay for a pre-installed win 8 and then have to pay again to a downgrade.

I agree. In fact, I wanted to upgrade my audio editing and sequencing machine from a tower to laptop about a year ago and ended up pulling the pin on a new computer a few months early because I wanted win7 os. It was challenging enough moving to 64 bit architecture, didn't need the added headache of win8 on top of it.

I'm not crazy about being advised to re-read a post of mine and having it's contents read back and explained to me as if I was somehow daftly unaware of what I posted. I find it equally condescending. If it was simply an oversight on your part, I apologize. If not, you may want to take your own advise.

What do the teachers want? They have not yet put an offer on the table as to what they are looking for. Seems a bit premature to strike when they haven't tabled a counter offer, even after the province has requested it.