blueblood

If other countries are bankrolling to produce their own resources, then Canada should follow suit in order to compete. Cheap goods are all fine and good, but we need to generate money in order to produce them, generating money comes from our industries, and if our industries can't compete, then the consumer has no money to spend at all and our country is all the poorer. If the Asian countries are banning imports of our cars, why should we let them in here? Our manufacturers would be much more competitive and would build better cars if we could compete in markets that weren't cornered by Asian auto manufacturers. IMO the Asian auto manufacturers are heavily subsidized. That being said, the unions are doing much more damage to the auto sector than the Imports are. If other countries didn't subsidize their goods, I would be against subsidies too. But if we don't play the game it's big trouble for us.

Oh come off of it, if Stockwell has a right to believe whatever he wants and to criticize him for believing in a religion is ridiculous. If we were to take pot shots at the Liberal member for wearing a turban in parliament you'd scream bloody murder.

Subsidy due to gov't interference. The North American auto sector would boom if we banned imported cars as the money would stay here and not go to Japan/Europe. It should either be no subsidies or everyone gets subsidies, no picking and choosing.

How about for automakers in Canada not being able to export to countries like South Korea and Japan where they are allowed to market their products globally, Our auto sector takes a huge hit and theirs booms??? It's not necessarily a monetary subsidation, but it is a subsidy nonetheless.

In the 90's and early 2000's the U.S. and E.U. would heavily subsidize their farmers and they in turn would pump out agricultural products at an alarming rate and would in turn dump their products to other countries citing "charity" the other countries including Canada who did not subsidize as heavily were forced to compete with rock bottom commodity prices and the others were basically paid a salary by their governments. This basically tanked the Canadian ag industry until Harper and Bush said screw this we're popping up ethanol plants and put the price back into balance. Had Canada subsidized like the E.U. and U.S. we would not be in this mess or had the U.S. and E.U. not subsidized we would not be in this mess. It's very hard for businesses to compete with each other when one is subsidized and one is not. To talk about the original point, it is demonstrated that everyone receives subsidies in one way or another and it's not just rural people. It's not fair to single out rural people for being subsidized, when everyone else is.

This topic doesn't make sense to put in a forum such as this, there are way too many die hards that have biased opinions (myself included).

So the general consensus is that Ezra Levant has the right to publish offensive cartoons and the Muslim population can call Ezra Levant an a**hole. Sounds fair to me. No need for tattling to a judge. A similar situtation is this... Just like some Showcase shows are full of softcore porn and are shown at times when young children are still awake (IMV reprehensible). Taking Showcase to court and staging riots for that would be ludacris, they have that right. Instead I lock out that channel and get to call them the perverted bastards they are. They have their right to free speech, I have mine.

Western Canadian Oil industry ----> Low taxes, means in some Liberal eyes that the oil industry is subsidized (Oil industry also takes place out in the country, I haven't heard of pump jacks in a city boy's basement) Bombardier, big taker of gov't cash Domestic auto makers, big takers of cash Jack Layton also says that by lowering corporate taxes we are subsidizing big banks and big oil Canadian Grain industry is seeing the highest grain prices in decades, the only Ag lobbyist you'll see is Stewart Wells crying "Save the CWB". Harper is going to have to throw more subsidies to the manufacturing sector if he wants his majority. Cutting out subsidies when other countries don't and won't is a recipe for a Canadian economic disaster

I suppose Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest are pulling a big hoax on everyone then in bitching about the manufacturing sector, and where does that occur... Here's a deadweight, BOMBARDIER anyone? Basically all Canadian industries are subsidized in one way or another, that's how our country works. Oh and that new tractor I bought, put in 5 grand of GST into the government coffers, but I'm not pulling my weight

Shall we apply the same logic to Ontario and Quebec when the American economy goes in the tank and can't buy their manufactured goods? Chip off the red hot rural economy now? In one year, who is going to become the deadweight?

How about calling it a good old coincidence. Best person for the job, if in reality the guys in the CPC just are better candidates than the women, why not have the best candidates doing the job? Why should Harper water down his party for the sake of affirmative action? It works the other way too, if a whole crop of women turn out to be much better candidates than the men, they should be thrown in too and the men would have to step up their game. It's all about getting the best all around candidate and whoever is better (guy or girl) should get the job.

I'm saying that there is the likelyhood of a tradeoff, and it works out to roughly the same. The higher taxes that are appraised on cottage and farmland are a tradeoff to the subsidies we get if any, the cost is passed off to urban consumers, 9 dollar wheat and 11 dollar canola anyone. You introduced the regional issue complaining how cities subsidized everything, I merely corrected you. Most country people vote tory which means in principle getting less services all around, so I don't see why your complaining about country people getting services when our vote pattern suggests we want less services and more of our own money in our pocket. Holy crap I'm in agreement with Guyser, Hell froze over.

Yes but in the case of the CWB the bullying is proving to be quite effective, the CWB has done more in the last 10 months than in the last 10 years. Maybe this will get the AECL to do their job properly and not sit around and collect cheques

I don't know how much it costs for delivering mail precisely. I'd need facts and figures. That 52 cents is not all tied up in travel costs, it also has to pay for staffing, there is much more staffing in urban areas obviously and a lot more mailed is shuffled around there, I'd say its a fair trade. Canada Post is going the way of the Dodo though, e-mail and express mail will kill it. The rural demand for land is considerable grain prices are at all time highs, without it you guys simply starve, it is given value based what you can get out of it. And compare the prices I gave you with a plot of land the same size out in Nunavut. A booming rural economy in today's time is raising housing prices in nearby towns and small cities at unprecedented rates. One key item keeping land values at a lower rate is the fact that the provincial governments expropriated mineral rights from land owners, had they not done that, land prices would be ridiculous. I think your beef should be with the communities in the high arctic most aren't even self sufficient. Western Canada is well on it's way to self sufficiency if we're not already there. It's our vast oil reserves, our hydro, and our now booming grain industry that's keeping Canada afloat. If you guys want to kick us out, we'd gladly go, the days of Western Canada relying on Ontario are long gone. Take your beef with Quebec and the extreme North.

I'll Bite. We don't get much for services. Trash - we load up the 3/4 ton truck and haul it to the dump ourselves Electricity - reg. rates plus "convenience" Natural Gas - I wish Sewer - Nope, just a septic tank and water from a well. Don't worry still runs TV - satellite (cheap Canadian garbage, the grey market american stuff) or good old rabbit ears Postal Service - Drive into town to the post office Cell phone - piss poor service, if anything I am subsidizing good cell service in cities by paying sky high bills and the phone not working half the time. Ambulance - ching ching. If I'm conscious I'm driving myself to the hospital Good Shopping - big day in the city Plus the taxes paid on every quarter section a person owns plus yard sites... The school division i was in before we amalgamated with a school division with an urban area was very well financially due to the large amount of farms paying lots of tax for few kids, then the urban area and it's large schools came in and sucked the bank account dry. Less demand for rural land... Hah!!! corner to corner 1/4 sections going for 150 large in the boonies or rent is approaching 50 bucks an acre. I can't imagine the cost out in Alberta. It depends on the small town/rural area for tax revenue. Some are more prosperous than others. It's like efficient or not cities, if a small town has lots of skids that don't contribute, then said town is not able to generate tax for services and has to be one that siphons off from cities and it won't get the same services as the next town over that is efficient. One also has to remember that some of the services were put in place by provincial governments at times when a lot more people lived out in the country and were under immense political pressure to do so.

Is it harder to freeze a river with a current than a dammed (literally) lake? I drove in the dirty W this year over a bridge when it was forty below and still saw open water. It usually gets stupid cold for about 2-3 weeks later on. Late Jan and early Feb are ususally frigid.

At my Ice fishing shack there is a foot and a half of ice. It would take some considerable melting to thaw that out. August was cold too.

Well it can be a subsidy in one point of view or a tax break in another. The Alberta oil industry got itself together by cutting taxes, some here would call that a subsidy, now look at Alberta, it's one of the richest areas in the world, and is a main reason why Canada is doing so well. Why can't we have those tax breaks to get the biofuel industry going too and improve the economy of western canada even more so. It's not like the government is writing out welfare cheques and not getting any money back. Everybody in Canada wins with this program. Cleaner skies, (not much cleaner but better than nothing), a much improved economy, more wealth, more jobs, more dollars in the governments pocket due to more tax revenue. I'm not getting any government cheques. All I'm getting is higher grain prices, which means I have more money to spend. Timmy has a job building plants, Bob has a job running them. Whatshisname in Africa doesn't have to worry about rich countries flooding his country with subsidized grain he can't compete with and can now grow his own and make a living at it. The fact that ethanol is bad for the environment is fallacy and I have shown that time and time again. What if we had this attitude with the Alberta oilfields, "why use our taxdollars to get this oil, when we could get it from elsewhere for much cheaper?"

What a load of BS. Rainforests are being hacked down regardless. If biofuels weren't eating them up, then the extremely profitable Brazilian cattle industry would. If the Brazilians want to knock off their rainforests that's their problem. In Canada, we're not going to be knocking down forests for fields because the forests are in undesirable growing land. That report is a cheap shot against agriculture, not biofuels. Read a western producer or a Manitoba Cooperator, demand for grain/oilseeds has been on a consistent rise worldwide, those forests were coming down biofuels or not. Defending this report, would make one against agriculture, against reducing CO2 emissions, against employing people, and against improving and diversifying the economy, have fun campaigning on that. Why are you against the Rural Western Canadian Economy? Under the Tory gov't the economy of the Prairies is taking off, why the heck would we send any Liberal MP's to Ottawa when we're doing great, but when the Liberals were in power, the rural economy was almost toast.

Maybe he is fishing for votes, I don't know.

ha ha. Those blasted zealots. That's why we won't see a Tory majority. Maybe in 2008 Harper would take shots at the far right zealots. Sure those votes stay home at election time, but they live in ridings where he already has it in the bag already. Maybe he can get some moderates with his fiscal policy... And i'm not wishing to discuss ethanol in this thread Shoot if it weren't for that muslim doctor in town, I'd be in considerable hot water if I got hurt on the job.

link there are piles and piles of links, and this is as current as the one you gave. We can waste bandwidth and throw links at each other till hell freezes over. This is where simple logic comes in, and I've demonstrated that time and again. Once gain I'm going to put these simple two questions at you and don't dodge around them by throwing an ethanol link at me. So you would rather pay to have someone on welfare than working at an ethanol plant being paid by a private company??? You would rather have your tax dollars go to china and india than boosting our economy and helping out the environment the little bit it does???

Wiki How much petroleum does fermenting sugar use, it can't be near as much as growing a crop. To implement Kyoto without tanking the economy, we'd have to buy carbon credits from developing nations. I'm pretty sure my argument stands. Had the Liberals won instead of Harper, this is what would have happened. From Wiki (emissions trading) Also from Wiki (kyoto protocol)God knows what half assed project China and India would come up with to make the carbon trading thing legit (lets plant two trees as our greenhouse gas project).

But if most of the energy used in producing ethanol is being used in the farming aspect of it, that argument is useless as the same amount of diesel is used for growing crops before ethanol as now. Farmers have been using a pile of fertilizer for years and the cost of fertilizer has been sky rocketing even before ethanol. I couldn't find any petroleum used in the fermentation process other than electricity, which Canada has an abundance of. I myself haven't burned anymore diesel and neither have the other farmers. The only difference is that we don't have mountains of unused grain anymore. So you would rather pay to have someone on welfare than working at an ethanol plant being paid by a private company??? You would rather have your tax dollars go to china and india than boosting our economy and helping out the environment the little bit it does???

I wasn't referring to just the State, I was referring to everyone in the country, don't worry if I want to refer to just the state, I'd use for example "the government..." I'm worried about the economy as a whole being so tied up in the success of oil. The people of Ireland have no oil and do better than us (hate to use Wiki, but check it out, there's some truth there). Figuratively speaking, I'd like to see oil as the icing on an economic cake, not the cake itself. I'm no Quebecer, but I think that Harper has to get his message across somehow to Quebecers who don't produce oil and are consumers that high oil prices are a good thing for our economy, but that would be hard explaining to people who pay steeply at the pump but don't see the money staying. It would appear that most quebecers are too focused on quebec and not seeing the bigger economic picture of the country. The socialist paradise Quebec that the PQ has propped up is a headache. If Harper can make the BQ and PQ look like the fools they are, he'll have his majority, but with the PQ and BQ brainwashing Quebecers with the "high oil prices is bad for the Quebec economy" Harper has a hard sell.