Jerry J. Fortin

Canada is a nice little place to sell cars in! Look at it this way, you can buy a car here and help some citizen keep a job or get one, or decide not to buy a Canadian car and employ the citizen of some other country. As long as the product is good, I will buy Canadian, I will even pay extra for it!

The whole shebang, its all the same thing anyway, tax dollars being spent. Of the 40 Billion on the "Stimulus" package, only 12 billion is on infrastructure the rest is tax cuts for individuals and business along with some targeted loans and worker training programs. Then there is the dollars going into the auto bailout package. There is only one tax payer! All Canadians will be paying for these things yet not all will receive any benefit at all. The auto bailout is almost exclusively and Ontario package is it not? The whole nation is to share 12 billion in economic stimulus and Ontario gets another 12 billion just for a bailout that puts not oner dime into the province and just gets shipped right across the border to the parent company's trustee in bankruptcy....

Sad isn't it? It has been bad for a long time. Yet it would seem the right place to spend public dollars right now! Better than pissing it away on GM anyway.........

Back the truck up! Did I say Alberta was a victim, or did I say that Ontario and Quebec were the targets for stimulus? What I was trying to say was that the money from all over the country is being plowed into an effort to do something about the economic problems of Ontario and Quebec. Even so the money isn't going to them! Its going into corporate hands, and the home nation of those corporations are noty in this nation. So in reality we are not even doing something for Ontario and Quebec but instead shipping the money to the good old USA to solve some corporate problem in their corner of the world. The package sucks! You just have to know that keeping a production share of 12 to 19 %, depending on what numbers you are listening to will still result in the loss of several thousand direct jobs and perhaps as much as another ten thousand indirect jobs in Ontario alone, The shrinking tax base hasn't even been properly addressed! That share of production will be a hotly disputed thing very soon. Once all the plant closures are over and the sell offs of all the divisions have been finalized and GM is down to say Caddy and Chev, that number of even 19% will look a lot like 5%, but you probably already know that right?

The American have some real problems to deal with, they are doing the best that they can with them. In 2007 the American did 15.37 trillion in GDP, Canada did 1.58 trillion. So we are one tenth of their economic size, but almost totally dependent upon them considering we do about 80% of all our foreign trade with them. That is why when the US economy gets a cold, we get the flu. But it seems to be a lot tougher on them than it is on us. The simple answer is to diversify our export portfolios.

The national debt right now is simply a non-issue. We can handle this and a hell of a lot more before things get completely out of whack. The real issue is the "whack" job done to the economy by the government. Spending is the real issue, not debt or deficit. Spending is the root, deficits and debts are only symptoms of the actual problem. Governments need to understand their own spending before they can actually do anything.

I will suggest that the so called "stimulus" package is utter garbage. Virtually all of the money tagged as such will be going directly into Ontario and to a lesser degree Quebec. Granted there are some infrastructure programs that are going to cities, but that is it. Cutting taxes is a waste of time before you can at least get a handle on spending. By this I mean knowing what you have to spend on. The government hasn't a freaking clue let alone any semblance of a plan toward this little issue. The system does not admit fault or flaw, and simply knows no limits in terms of how and what it spends our money on. If citizens needed any clue about pork barrel spending in Canada this so called economic package should speak loudly to those with the ears to it what it really says. Simply cutting spending is harmful to both the economy and the people. You need to know what you have to spend and what you have to spend it on first. So what is required is a very systematic approach. The government must determine exactly what its fixed liabilities are, then add to that total projections reflecting growth and inflation. Following that exercise they need to have the backbone to actually put their foot down and find out what the citizens want and what they are willing to pay for. This is no small undertaking because there are going to be a lot of programs that the public would rather see cut than preserved. For starters the total of grants and loans that are not involving education need to be put on the block and examined very carefully. We need to decide wether or not we want a nanny state with a Prime Minister in charge of a Big Brother government or one in which the citizens are free to make decisions for themselves. All of the social program spending this country has represents a large portion of its budget, so there is lots of room for variables and complications. The biggest bang for the buck can be found there. That is not to say we should cut all or even any of these programs but it does mean that a great deal of scrutiny MUST BE utilized in order to calculate and control expenditures. In short there is only one way out of our current problems and that is to simply STOP any further spending or new spending on any damned thing until the entire process can be reviewed and repaired. This will not fix anything immediately but it will prevent any further damage. Right now we are still well under a trillion dollars of debt, which is horrific but sustainable given the nature of our resource based economy. However, if we don't get our act together that number will be exceeded in short order. This little economic hiccup is a long way from over and there many hands already reaching out for tax dollars since the government started down this reckless path.

I know the money is going to pay bills, but it is just hard to believe that so much money flies around in that company. The issues that I have with the company is that it has negotiated its way into a corner with its employees and marketed its way into a corner with its customers. The company was and in my opinion still is nonviable. Even after restructuring, there is still the pension liability issue. That is not going to go away, under the current circumstances. I think what should happen with the company is not merely restructuring but instead complete liquidation. The public money already spent is already gone and it represents only a drop in the bucket of what is truly required to operate because this is one large mother of a company. The guys that ran it into the ground were not hurt at all, in fact they made out quite well. They never bought any stock, it was given to them in bonuses and loans. Yet nobody sees this as a problem. I don't think it is worth doing anything about it, its just that they were a big part of the problem. What is needed is some regulations that serve to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. I mean the entire focus here is one of handing out public money, our tax dollars into supporting private enterprise and ignoring the root cause of the problem which still underlies most of the other corporations. So what happens when the next one bites the dust? I was against handing over tax dollars to start with, now I think that our government should have the balls to use tax policies to secure the investments. I do think that there is a way to recoup the expenses. Chrysler owes millions in taxes, so does GM. I think the wise move is to take these guys on as soon as possible and make amends to the citizens. Use the current rates of interest and get what is owed in either dollars or property and do it quickly.

It would be even more ugly than it is now. The thing is that this nation is making a large mistake in how it is going about dealing with the problem.

Look, it isn't that complicated. These things have been around for a very long time and no matter what society tries to do about them, the free market assists in the survival of these products and services. You simply cannot legislate against the wants and desires of the people, making these things illegal does not stop them from happening at all. In fact it costs money to restrict the trade, that is tax payers money going to hell in a hand basket doing nothing about something. What is far more logical is to actually do something about the problem. Regulate and tax the hell out of it . Clean up the more troublesome issues with the problem and educate the hell out of the public. This all ties in with improvements to public education. Kids need a lot more than what they are getting in school. Education is the key to the future, always has been and always will be. These vices we are talking about are mere degrees of the recreational and emotional spectrum of society. There are far more things to do, yet these things being determined to be "bad" are therefore more desirable distractions to some, for whatever reason.. The point is that either none of these things, these distractions are acceptable or they all are. You simply cannot legislate morality. By trying to do so you will create more problems than you can solve. The truth is that having governments determine what is or is not acceptable behavior is and infringement of freedom to the citizens. The idea is not for government to tell us what we can do and what we should like or dislike. That is a state that very few people would want to live in.

Leafless, you may consider that Quebec is unique, the government accepts this as do most citizens. Let them speak their language and teach it to their children, what harm is there in that? English is spoken almost everywhere in Montreal, it is a very cosmopolitan city. Outside of Montreal, there is understandabley less spoken English, but those folks do not seem to mind. If you want someone more biased than Iggy, support Harper.

Well folks, this is how the system is working. You have to love governments.............

This bailout package seems like a nice transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector. It looks to me like there is a lot of money being tossed around, money seems to be going into GM by the billions, but where the hell is it going? The banks claim they are not getting any money, we know the stock holders are not getting any money, neither did the bond holders. All of the pensioners and all of the employees would not cost what GM has already got from the governments. So where the hell is it going?

I think I would like him to do that!

I watched the documentary or docudrama in question. I found that the most compelling evidence were the genetic markers. In my view this is the proof needed to document the creation of the first nations peoples of North America. A mixture of European and Asian bloodlines, it all makes sense at this point given that there is no evidence at all of a branch of humanity actually originating here. Africa was the birthplace of humanity, that is a very widely accepted scientific conclusion. From there migrations took place at various times which populated the planet. The one fly in the ointment are the Aborigenies of Australia, but they must have come form somewhere!

Yikes! I guess he won't vote for Super Steve...

Too little and too late. Opel is a much older brand, but it has a lot in common with Saturn models doesn't it. A Euro-Saturn if you will.......at any rate I hope Frank builds the damned things here in the land of the Canuck.

Landslide Annie! She went down in flames for a change, still smoking last I heard. But don't bet on too many Liberals getting elected here, even Edmonton tossed what they had.

There are screw ups everywhere. Look at GM, the size of that corporate Titanic is amazing, yet they ran it into a financial iceberg anyway. Wait till the electric cars start full production and watch the oil companies start to crater. The government does not lay claim to owning all the idiots, just a lot of them.

Actually I am all for the legalization of prostitution, drugs and guns. Prostitution.. is the oldest profession of the planet, and a market always has and always will exist for the service. So why not clean up the "industry" by removing the minors, the pimps and the drug indebtedness. Tax them and have them pay healthcare costs and pension benefits, EI and all the rest of it. Drugs, have been around just as long as hookers have. Weed itself is harmless, as are its derivatives. The problem with soft drugs is the use by minors, so regulate late it the way you regulate booze and tax the hell out of the stuff. It will reduce a lot of court and police time as well as save a lot of money in eliminated jail time. Guns, hand guns are already restricted and the long gun registry is a joke. Why would they not simply have the vendors of guns and bullets require customers to fill out a legal form of disclosure and have been done with it. No form on record no purchase, simple. Again tax the hell out of the sales and be done with it.

That is true! Still a Liberal Government of Canada would do little to reverse the trend, it would only push more people into the Conservative corner. The Liberals may have been the first government in Alberta, but since that forst government fell, there has not been another Liberal one since here. The place is decidedly right wing.

Even so, there was no national government, so of course there were numerous cultures and societies. Yet that is not "our history", that began in 1867, unless of course you are first nations citizens.

The trend is upward! Hoping that the Liberals will reverse that is like hoping for rain in the desert. You can hope, but...........

Selling public assets when the lowest possible value could be put on them is the hallmark of right wing governments. Alberta faced that reality when we "privatized" the natural gas utility company we owned, and the telephone companies we owned, and the electricity generating companies we owned. We went from having the cheapest utilities in the nation to one of the most expensive. Meanwhile these once former crown corporations have made 100's of billions in profits.

Since 1867 anyway, that was the first time there really was a Canada, before that it was just a colony or a group of first nations peoples.