mikedavid00

You can apply that same sentiment to almost all the public sector. Teachers, Firefighters, Police, and the fat cat civil servants who do nothing all day. All the above do nothing but make work projects most of the time to justify their employment. Teachers actually do real work... for 3 hours a day with 4 months off a year. But hey they actually do work baby sitting our kids.

The good old 'safety card'. When all else fails resort to 'they do it to keep you safe'. It's always in the name of safety. I mean come on, those poor employees at Health Canada in Ottawa in those spacious cubical. I mean.. those dangerous catered meetings. Those dangerous keyboards. Those sketchy elevators. And lets not forget, the DANGEROUS glare from those nasty 24" 1080p monitors! We need to get them iPads! Yeah! Haven't you heard, it's for their safety.

Thank God they sold the company. The gov't shouldn't own companies at all. Now that it's private, we won't see a Liberal-created political fiasco like we did a couple years back with the isotope. The gov't should privatize every crown corporation they own. No exceptions. (I like how people think that when the gov't owns something, it's low cost and efficient.. lol.. what planet do they live in? Oh yeah I forgot - planet CBC/Communism)

Then you must feel sorry for most Canadians that work in the private sector. I don't. I'm just sorry that the gov't takes so much of their money away to give it to another 'class' of citizens who essentially do nothing all day but attend catered meetings and conferences in Europe and Las Vegas.

Well the problem starts when you have all the CRTC board members who hold shares of Bell Canada, sitting across the table from BELL CANADA, pretending to be unbiased and not take protectionist measures to ensure they stay profitable. Then Canadians turn around and wonder why their cell phone bills are so high. Only a few people know the real answer. Now you do to.

For once the gov't did something that it shouldn't be doing in the interest of Canadians. We could sit here all day and talk about what the gov't shouldn't be doing. The way to avoid this is to stop collective bargaining. You can allow it, but keep the gov't out of it. Let the companies re-hire new employees when the salaries become unsustainable. It's compulsory to join the union. That is sick and corrupt.

Never. I worked in the private sector most of my life and can tell you that most of them fold. They have trouble paying the bills. They struggle to survive. They don't get gov't protectionism. I can say that most of them really do want to treat their employees well. We went on boat cruises, had lunches, bowling, Christmas parties.... childs stuff. But when it comes to REALLY putting out solid raises, health plans, 3 day work weeks, part time hours, pensions, guaranteed job security, guaranteed salary increases. YEAH RIGHT! THAT WILL BE THE DAY LOL! THEY DON'T HATE YOU, THEY REALLY CAN'T AFFORD IT. These private, struggling companies are like anyone else in the private sector - struggling to pay bills and survive. In the last few years, if you've seen a poster on the front of a Best Buy or Future Shop window, those posters were ultimatly processed and sent out by *ME*. I developed the system to send out those posters nation wide to all the Future Shops and Best Buy stores. Also Telus locations. Remember those Music CD's in Loblaws, Canadian Superstore, Zehrs, etc. That was ME AGAIN! That's the company I worked for. This company was losing money every month. Had NUMEROUS times when the doors were going to get locked. Owed the bank $4 million dollars. It was a family owned business with 10 million of yearly revenue. No one ever got a raise. Everyone was expected to come in on weekends to do work (for free). But people wanted to do it. It was a group effort to keep the place a float. Eventually, Best Buy wanted an inventory count, after Christmas, they pulled of our company. Everyone got laid off, Telus pulled out when they heard the news. You should have seen people crying. The hurt. The upset. Everyone gave so much in our work family. The downfall of our company was the owners were too generous. They paid needless executives who did nothing all day. Remote workers in Calgary and Vancouver. The IT manager always spending thousands on needless servers. It was a salary problem and our business wasn't sustainable. Also the gov't gouging us didn't help. The accountants tried to tell the boss over and over but action was never taken. Actually at this company he did pay for most of everyone's dental and drug plan. It was $10 a month. You guys don't understand how it's like to struggle to survive in the private sector. Only civil service and gov't protected unions (mining, auto, etc) are the ones with benefits. The private sector, hell no. My wife is going on mat leave soon and she has to go on EI. The same everyone else gets. Her company doesn't top up her EI like a civil servant. My wife is a lower cast in Canadian society so we have to struggle having a new baby where a union member does not. So she has to PAY for the well being of the civil servant to enjoy her mat leave, and the thanks we get is we have to suffer through our own mat leave. Don't you see the oppression in that? I guess not. You've been blinded by your country for so long now. It's sick and dysfunctional.

Not necessarily. What would happen is the wages would adjust to the specific area. For instance, thanks to McGuinty, Ontario has a very, very high minimum wage now which has devistated our economy when factoring in gas price increases. Our minimum wage is so high because the Toronto Star ran a story of how this poor, immigrant single mother came from Sri Lanka, had 4 kids, got divorced, couldn't apply for benefits (sponsorship), and minimum wage wasn't enough to pay for her rent. She had like $100 left over for the month. Instead of preventing this lady and her family into Canada in the first place, or, sending her back home with her children (the logical things to do), McGuinty decided it was high time to raise minimum wage.. a LOT. It went from like $8 to $10.75. ALL the low end pay-scales got bumped up because of that and that feel directly on consumer prices. All the menues get re-done at the all the restaurants and prices went up huge. Portions went down. Tim Hortons posted a notice that coffee prices were going up. The problem with this, is it raised minimum wage across ALL of Ontario including rural Ontario where rent and living costs are much lower. This caused devastation in those areas for smal; business owners. Prices shot way, way up as minimum wage became a communist 'baseline' wage. When the gov't sets the minimum wage at $20/h.. what happens? All the jobs become $20/h for 70% of working people. That is essentially communism. The Walmart should pay what the LOCAL market will bare, because it's a store meant to serve LOCAL communities. Contrary to what the media tells you, companies really do want to treat their employees well. They want to pay you the highest they can get away with. Large Corporations are a different story sometimes. They want to pay you as little as possible and work you as hard as they can. I worked for a few. I worked at Microsoft actually for a year and a half. It was a very cushy job. Pay was acceptable, benefits sucked. We were treated well. Free drinks from the fridge. Free chocolate milk, etc. I've worked at very low moral places. Corporations where they wanted to send you home early, squeeze what they could out of you. Pay you low. These places had bad reputations to work. Bell Canada I hear is a terrible place to work. Whenever I get asked what I want for pay, I always say 'whatever you think is fair'. I always get on the top end of the scale when I take that approach.

Lol..

Yes. They get pension, benefits, most of them are well are 50k, and they get guaranteed job security. Many working 3 day work weeks (bus drivers etc). Private sector employees can't seem to keep a job for over a year these days with all the companies cutting back and going under. We get paid much less when you factor in the constant unemployment. So over a 10 year period, the civil servant makes WAY more money. They are indeed a separate, special class of people. They are the next layer above in the pyramid of our social structure. I get half of my money stolen from me by the upper layers of the pyramid. Look at this old photo from 1911 that I found last night: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.png I have to say my brother is very smart when he came up with his pyramid theory. We actually made a video meant for Youtube going into depth about the Canadian pyramid structure, pay rates, salaries, etc. I laid out our social class on a white board with numbers and stats to back it up. I went into pay scales of people at the bottom of the pyramid showing that 70% of the bottom rung make in the 10$-15$/h range. Actually when I was in the 10-15/h range, all that worked around me were struggling, older Canadians that made those wages for most of their lives and couldn't break out. I only made more of myself because I moved and took a huge risk. But I was young, single, and could do it.

Yes that is true most of the time, the reason why is because of 'supply and demand'. When a job requires MORE responsibility, it is harder to find people that can handle the responsibility. So to entice these people, the salary needs to go up. For instance, if I'm hiring a CMA to handle a new division of my enterprise, it's his responsibility to ensure that everything is feasible and we're making money. If he fails, the whole company goes under so he has a LOT of responsibility. This person is a very rare find so needs to get paid a lot more. But what happens when the media and big brother FOOL YOU into thinking every civil service job is SO IMPORTANT!! That bring me to police. How much responsibility do you really need to make a damn arrest after a crime has been committed. Well we have security guards now with guns and able to make arrests. They don't get paid NEARLY as high. Detectives are another story though. That requires more responsibility. But the officers? Who cares about them. They are security guards in my eyes. $100,000 security guards these days. I personally feel that paramedics have WAY more responsibility than police, yet they get paid so much less. The reason why they were privatized is because the response times were poor when most of them were civil servants (there's a surprise). Actually paramedics don't get paid that bad.. they also get to work 12 hour days and get paid a full weeks pay. They work 3 days a week. Just like nurses. 3 day work weeks. Actually a LOT of civil servants get to work 3 day weeks. Back during the tech boom, lots of companies allowed 3 day work weeks. It was awesome. It felt like I was working part time. The 12 hour shifts didn't feel any longer... I got Sat, Sun, Mon, Then Wed and Thu off. Most of the week off with full time pay. This is back before MASS IMMIGRATION came sweeping through to take all our jobs and saturate our job market. Man companies in the private sector really enticed employees with all the perks. Now, I'm competing with 80 people for a single job. Just cutting immigration would make this country a great place to work and enhance the quality of everyone's lives.

And vice versa. I noticed your sig and it's very fitting. No it won't. And do you know why? Who here can guess why we don't already have two tier healthcare? Thought not. The real reason why we don't get private healthcare, is because all of our civil service will want healthcare plans! These cost in the ballpark of $1k MINIMUM in Canada. Knowing our gov't, the costs will be huge because our gov't will practice it's destructive interventionism and mess it all up. None the less, it would still be available. Finally new hospitals being build across Canada. The top of the pyramid KNOWS that the unions will demand these healthcare plans at the cost of at least $1k per MONTH per civil servant. This is a 12k increase per year on every civil servants salary high or low. Also, when the civil servant retires, he or she will STILL get the health plan paid for them. So it's a lifetime of quality, private healthcare. DO YOU THINK THAT THE MAJORITY OF LOWLY, STRUGGLING, LOW PAID CANADIANS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID WILL GET TO EXPERIENCE PRIVATE HEALTHCARE??? LOL ARE YOU KIDDING? NOOO.. WE'RE TOO BUSY ENSURING THAT THOSE IDIOTS IN THE CIVIL SERVICE WHO DO NOTHING ALL DAY GET A PENSION, HUGE SALARY, AND BENEFITS WHICH NOW INCLUDE PRIVATE HEALTHCARE! And THAT is your role as a Canadian. Just sit down, don't complain, and get to work to support the rich and elite lifestyles of the upper tiers of the pyramid. A second class of people. (I take this issue with passion and serious because it's the number 1, most essential and important thing you need to know as a Canadian. It expalins why Canada is Canada. Why we take in so many immigrants compared to everyone else, why we have public healthcare, why we are the highest taxed nation in the G8. CPCFTW is someone who is armed with the proper knowledge of how Canada 'works'. You have to understand the markets, who makes the money, where it gets funneled to, and who controls your destiny in Canada. You'll never look at the country the same again. You realize that you don't have freedom at all in Canada. The gov't takes it all from you and leaves you with the illusion of freedom). Freedom isn't about speech, it's really economic freedom that matters most.

EXACTLY! This person understands what Canada is really about. You know the question 'what's the meaning of life?'. I asked the question 'What is the meaning of living in Canada... what is our purpose here'?.. My brother answered" "what it means to be a Canadian is to support the big pyramid system. You are at the bottom layer of the pyramid, and the upper layers of the pyramid (civil servants, non profits, politicians, gov't elites) exist soley to suck money away from you to funnel up to the top of the pyramid". View the society of Canada as a big pyramid. You are at the top, or bottom. Most of us are at the bottom, SUPPORTING the people at the top. The top of the pyramid is now so big, that the only way they can have people supporting them is to let in immigrants. They come with a life savings, take out home loans, and have a short term benefit to the govt's coffers. When that doesn't work, they just print more money. When the gov't announces spending, what they are REALLY doing is saying "we're going to hire more civil servants". When the gov't spends (healthcare, police, you name it), they are actually spending on SALARIES OF PEOPLE. Each civil servant (who usually works 3-4 days a week and does 6 hour days and surfs the web and does personal calls.. i should know.. i worked for the gov't) will cost us between 3 to 11 million dollars during their lifetime - EACH SINGLE CIVIL SERVANT. Many Canadians and working families are spending up to 12 hours a day with travel to work, 5 days a week, and sometimes weekends WITHOUT PAY, working and getting paid peanuts to pay for these idiots in the civil service. They are half brain dead, but consider themselves extremely self important and elite. You know the types. Actually I was at the bank last year and we started talking about teachers. The lady said point blank that teachers 'aren't smart'. She said she couldn't believe how dim they were. She said that the teachers got special interest rates on their mortgages and guaranteed loans for this and that. She works at a bank. She's low paid, has to share an office, has to do a REAL days work.. you know the drill. My friend got a job at BMO in Markham as a financial advisor when he graduated from Carleton U with his masters in business. His pay was $15.50 an hour. Another friend of mine was a teller in Ottawa.. Hunt Club area near the buffet. She got $10.50 an hour as a teller. Benefits? Lol.. you have to PAY for them. Are you kidding? The company actually MAKES MONEY off any benefits you buy from ManuLife etc. They sell their own staff benefits. A MINORITY of private companies give you FREE benefits (dental, eye, drug). Although it does exist. It's not the majority. These are the hardships that 75% of full time, HARD WORKING Canadians who pay taxes have to go through each day. They aren't under paid, they just get TOO MUCH TAKEN FROM THEM TO GIVE TO THE PYRAMID!!

That number INCLUDES public service and other unions (auto workers etc). Get back to reality and talk about the median pay of 75% of working Canadians. You will find about $10-$15/h range. That's the truth and the truth hurts a lot of people. American's alrgest employer pays an everage of $10 an hour. Actually, Americans are living off about $12 and hour. I wish I could find the site where they broke it down. It actually made headlines a few years ago. My first job was a postal worker.. err.. paper boy getting below minimum wage. Then I made minimum wage throughout my teens. I got $4.15/h at my first 'real' job at McDonalds. Then after school I made $12.50/h in a call center. Most people stayed in that salary range. Worked retial. etc. I decided to move, pursue a career then it went up and up and I eventually did well for myself, but I had to move to this sh*t hole of a city or it wouldn't have happened for me. The demand for my skills was here. So I had to move. It's not credentialism.. just supply and demand. If I was back in Ottawa i'd still be making the same low pay. Possibly working retail.. something like that. Ottawa was tough.. getting 'sent home' from work after 3 hours was normal. Never getting a full 37.5 hours a week. Silly small pay checks. Only 25% of Canadians make money. Those people are called 'civil servants and union workers'. The high pay, private sector in Canada is very, very small. Microscopic and usually reserved for people over 50 years of age. The people who really get the salaries are the energy workers, gov't licensed engineers, professors, doctors, etc. etc. All gov't, unionized communist jobs. We get our money stolen from us to pay for this paychecks. That's the simplest way to put it. And yes, they own the stock market. Not the lowly Canadian.

And who sets the minimum wage again? So in actuality, the gov't is setting the Wal Mart wages.. See, there's a 'lower' pay range and a 'higher' pay range. The majority of workers in Canada are not part of the civil service or dying industrial unions and are paid 'lower' pay range - especially in the United states. When the gov't raises MINIMUM wage a couple of dollars, all the wages on the 'lower end' of the scale go up. So a forklift operator making $12 and hour gets bumped up to $14. This is the damage McGuinte caused in Ontario when prices went through the roof when he raised minimum wage an insane amount. Now a hamburger at a restaurant here is pushing $12. Overall I like the minimum wage.. but it should be MINIMUM. Not a BASELINE SOCIALIST LIVING PAY if that makes sense to you. So there are small towns now in Ontario, where a minimum wage job is paying as almost high as skilled labor. That is communism - not free market. The minimum wage should be a MINIMUM. Let the companies compete for the 'low end' of the market place workers. Surprise, you'll see hourly pay go UP! Stop acting elite and trying to intellectualize pay structures and salaries. Go to Russia if you want to do that. The key is to stop the 'people flooding' of Canada through our needless, useless immigration policies and let the employers start to fight over us employees. I remember the days of telephone interviews. You get interviewed over the phone, they then PAY for your move out to another city. Who remembers those days?

If GM failed, what would have happened in REALITY is this: -There would be empty warehouses with automotive making machinery. -Private investors would buy all the used assets at great prices to be able to make cars. -A new company would be in place. -Jobs would be open for employment in the new facility. -The slate would be wiped clean and there would be no way in hell that the new company would pay out the insane benefits, pensions, and salaries of these button pushers. -Car prices would drop drastically. -Consumers would pay less for cars. -Consumers would have more money because their monthly car payments would be cut in half. -Consumers would spend in the local economy. -People could open small business and not go under. -Employment would go up accross the board. -New people employed means more spending in the economy. -Now people are having trouble finding new employees at the old 'low wages'. -Employers begin to raise wages and benefits. -Now everyone is enjoying a better quality of life living in Canada. All this from the big auto makers going under. Instead, we kept the gravy train flowing to button pushers demanding $75/h and have to pay inflated automobile costs to cover their lifestyle.

Now what happens when Unions own 80% of the corporations through investment and pensions? And the gov't knows this? And the gov't now begins to protect these corporations to ensure their success in order to protect pensions of the unions (remember 3 of 4 unions are gov't unions with guaranteed backed pensions). See a lot of you guys haven't researched where the money comes from and how it flows around in Canada. The media gives you basic spin and you just repeat their talking points. You think the Toronto Stock Exchange is filled with money from 'day traders' like what you see off TV? Lol.. the guys in suits trading stocks like winners. You've been watching too many movies. The market is filled with money from the PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS. THE PUBLIC SECTOR GET PAID THROUGH MONEY FROM THE LITTLE GUY IN CANADA GETTING HALF OF HIS MONEY TAKEN AWAY FROM HIM TO PAY FOR THESE PEOPLE. 1 IN 4 FULL TIME WORKERS WORK FOR THE GOV'T. 17% OF THE VOTING PUBLIC WORK FOR THE GOV'T. This country *IS* messed up and fascist.

LOL What fantasy world do you live in? Of course employers dictate to us our work agreements. It's a JOB on their terms. lol.. unreal. If we don't like thier terms, we are free to leave somewhere else. The communists and facists here on the far left are very confused when it comes to this topic. They just can't understand that determining wages should not be done by a group of intellectuals. It's really scary that Canadians have been bread to think like this. Wow.

I should also note that when I was younger I used to be very pro union,. Pro Police. And still considered myself very right wing. I was drinking the Koolaid fed to me by the media. Once you get older and understand how the economy works.. specifically who does what in society and how the money flows, you realize that you in now way, shape, or form live in a 'free' country. The downfall to everything that is evil in our society is the gov't. When they put their hands in something, it fails miserably. If there was no gov't, we'd be so far ahead in humanity. There would be cures for major diseases and society would be so much better. What's happened in the last 15 years is gov't has grown bigger than it's ever been and we've now moved towards fascism and are soon approaching a police state. Where I live, we now got cameras up at intersections aiming to get innocent citizens accidentally going through red lights. It happens to all of us. But big brother is there to 'get us'. We have a new cast system. The civil service, union cast (3 of 4 unions are the civil service). To get into a union, you have to be a friend of family member to get in. This takes us back to the royalty days of kings and queens. You were a 'noble' or 'peasant'. To be a noble, you had to be born into a noble or royal family with few exceptions. Most people though were just peasants that got their money TAKEN from them to give to the nobles and royalty. The exact same thing is happening now, except the 'noble and royal' class is 1 out of every 4 people. It's TOO LARGE! Unsustainable!

Here we go again. It's not up to intellectuals to sit around a conference table and determine the pay of job occupations. That is communism. Just let the market handle the pay rates and the natural pay and benefits will be fair to everyone I promise you... (as long as we end the practice of 'people flooding' our own labor markets). Do you know why a surgeon gets paid so much? It's not his 'intelligence and skill'. In 2 months any surgeon can have you doing a hip replacement surgery. Yes YOU! It's a manual procedure. No experience needed. But the reason why their pay is crazy is because there is a HUGE demand for them in the labor market! There is NOT a sufficient supply of medical specialists so the salaries of these people skyrocket. Our gov't (as usual) creates this short supply of doctors and specialists; the gov't through use of institutions and credential-ism actually create a shortage of many medical professions which ends up driving up their wages. In many areas, pharmacists are getting paid $18/h. Some areas have far, far too many pharmacists. Other places like Hawaii really need them, so the pay goes WAY up. Especially for hotel chef's. You even get free room and board they are so desperate for chef's. So it's not about an actual skill persay, it is actually what is in demand. It might be that digging with a shovel might be a far more required and demanded skill than a pharmasist. The difference is, the pay SHOULD reflect that instead of big brother skewing the job market ensuring that every medical profession is in short supply so they get paid more. -Unions are bad. -Gov't run Institutions and credential-ism is bad. -Immigration flooding our job market is REAL BAD. -Gov't payscales that are 'templated' are bad. -Gov't subsidization of industry is bad. -Gov't protectionism, ponzi schemes are bad. -Gov't cartels are bad (the dairy cartel, wheat board, etc. etc.) -Gov't ownership of anything that can be private sector is bad (hospitals as an example). Oh by the way, joining the union in Canada Post is MANDATORY. So again, there is no freedom of association or you would be free NOT to associate with the union.

Most all unions are part of big brother and protected by big brother. The proletariat are the victims of this.

No they shouldn't. They also shouldn't have laws to allow unions to 'stick up' the public. They should allow Canada post put the middle finger to the union and hire anyone off the street to work at a fraction of the pay with no benefits. I bet all the positions will be filled as we have huge unemployment in Canada. Shipping prices will finally be corrected to the rate they should be. Most importantly, prices will go down for consumers on many items and small business can finally compete with Americans when shipping a packages.

Well I got $40 a week to work 1.5 hours a day to deliver the Ottawa Citizen newspaper which was MUCH harder work than delivering letters. I also had to work 6 days a week. And also, when I couldn't deliver my route because I had a fever (I was 11-12 years old), I was told to get my parents or a friend to deliver it for me but it had to be done. I remember on boxing day having to run out and deliver the papers. All the blizzard, snow, you name it. Those bags were SO heavy in those days. I also had to do collections. So a postal worker, who works even less than a teacher (lets face it their both part time jobs), somehow deserved more than I did??? My brother was in Cyprus and they had PLAIN CLOTHED, NON UNIONIZED, PART TIME, YOUNG, CIVILIANS delivering the mail on Fridays only. Just a days pay. They rode scooters and came out every Friday all over Cyprus delivering the mail. Plain clothed, young civilians. NO UNION. NO HIGH PAY. JUST PAY FOR A DAYS WORK ON FRIDAYS. The job should be worth what it's worth. Let supply and demand dictate what the pay be. Me thinks it would be like any other unskilled job - have no benefits, minimal sick days, minimal vacation, 50 managers watching and tracking your every move, a FULL 8 HOURS DAY WORK, and the pay would be 30%-50% over minimum wage. Something like $12/h to start. The perks would be no direct boss over you and being able to work with headphones (serious). It would draw a lot of people. If not, the pay would go up to accommodate. In Canada, the gov't controls *everything*. The gov't basically dictates your life right now. Wait till the police state comes in. It's more than just a police state.. it's a mentality of citizens. Citizens that snitch on each other. On this forum, no one ever got banned. It almost never happened. Yet for the first time, I've been banned twice now. I've said WAY, WAY worse things in the past. What is really happening is the mindset of the police state is setting in. You have Michael Harder running around policing the forum. Moderators here who used to be pretty cool, are now trying to threaten users so to speak not to be honest and strong willed in their posts or you'll be banned. Trying to set examples of people. This is all part of the police state to come. I should mention that the police state does not come from the feds. It's more of a 'local' provincial, city, citizen thing. Not a fed thing. People always under estimate the power of the cities and provinces in certain things. I told me brother.. "next thing you know, the gov't won't let you buy an oven and cook in your kitchen until you take a safety course proving you can cook and use an oven and knives safely". It was a joke at first.. then both of us pause and almost at the same time say "Actually I can seriously see that happening". In the UK after the gun bans, now gun crime is rampant. Also knives are being used? What kind? Kitchen knives. There's a knife problem in the UK. It's already in the works. New knives that don't have pointy tips. Licenses to buy a knife. All in the name of safety. Losing all your freedoms to big brother. I'm telling you mark my words the police state is coming. Don't give in. -Stop Immigration. -Stop Unions. -And ideally, stop public schools and universities. Stop credentialism. All are a sickness. A parasite of our country and culture. An evil.

GOOD! Finally some leadership in Canada (although I don't agree with the games and corrupt methods of how this is going down... at least SOMETHING is being done to stop this 'salary/benefit/pension CRAZINESS' in Canada.

There is NO right to association in this country. If there was, I would be able to open a cigar club and allow smoking inside. I am not free to associate with other smokers. This means there is no real freedom of association. There are no freedoms actually. It's just an illusion that the media sells. Unions matter because we live in a FASCIST state. The unions work for gov't protected industries 9 times out of 10. Facts are, DHL relies on our gov't (border control, airports, etc) to be in business. The gov't will protect DHL because it's a publicly traded company. Who invests in these stocks? People with pensions. Who holds pensions? UNION MEMBERS DO. Who are union members in Canada? 3 out of 4 are the CIVIL SERVICE. Where does the pension money come from? THE CIVILIAN. YOU AND ME. And how much money does the average Canadian make who is NOT in a union? -> About 25k-30k per person on average. These people don't have money to invest in the stock market. They can barely make ends meet because they have half of their money taken away from them by big brother. The unions price fix themselves into outrageous wages and benefits and pensions on OUR DOLLAR. Private OR Public. The gov't aids and embeds them in this. My car, *SHOULD* cost about $15k. It costs for $40k. Most of the inflated cost is going to UNION SALARIES FROM THE AUTO WORERS AND PART MANUFACTURER UNIONS. YOUR ENERGY BILL IS SO HIGH BECAUSE YOU ARE PAYING HUGE, HUGE, HUUUUGE SALARIES AND BENEFITS FOR BUTTON PUSHERS THAT WORK AT ENERGY PLANTS. THAT *IS* WHAT YOUR POWER BILL IS ALL ABOUT. Unions effect every one of us like you have NO idea and it's what makes us fascist. Call it an 'added tax' of over inflated prices and services to cover overly inflated paychecks. Unions take away the law of natural, free market economics. It destroys the laws of supply and demand. I'm telling you they are sick, corrupt, and evil. If you want to live in an AMAZING country, and have an amazing life with great salaries and benefits for everyone, then you want a free market economy and say NO to fascism. Say NO to the gov't. Say NO to unions and price fixing and gouging. And most importantly, say NO to useless immigration... mass 'people flooding' of our market place that ensures everyone's poverty.