Jerry J. Fortin

Broken spirit or not, he was a minor who managed to get himself into some very deep trouble. Lets think about that for a minute. How did he get into the position in the first place? Was he kidnapped and transported into a war zone against his will? Whether or not he committed a criminal act is another story, one which you can be sure the justice system will focus on to the exclusion of reason. This person found his way into a war zone and was caught and punished for it. I am sorry but I have little concern for this individual.

Debt servicing is a very real issue because it serves to detract from spending. The way around the problem is to either cut spending, or change the entire tax structure to translate into a larger and more accessible revenue stream.

I believe that 2009 will bring some equalization money to Ontario. It seems like the west will be supporting the east for a while. If there was ever any hope of dumping this tax grab, it would have had to happen before Ontario got to the trough.

In my view, nothing could be further from the truth. Harper is all about power and control, he doesn't even give his Ministers freedom of speech let alone action. He is a micro-manager who deserves all he gets.

Schedule "B" section 49, Canada Constitution 1982.

Time will tell, but I do think he is more than a match for Harper in debate.

Even so, he is the Prime Minister. The whole government is his responsibility, and he gets to call the ball because that is how the Constitution says it will happen. The people are content to let the politicians duke it out in a public forum, then choose to follow whoever they believe to be the last man standing. In fact we often vote against, not for our politicians. With that in mind, I see Iggy in stealth mode, prowling around alot without any major confrontation. This may be a mistake on his part, but perhaps not. For a change we seem to have a politician willing to wait for the right opportunity to attack. Iggyis a little different than what we are used to in the position he is in. Harper is very predictable, Iggy is not.

I will suggest that Canada needs to rethink its defensive capabilities. After all, defense is more relevant than most other concerns for the federal government. The nature of the beast is such that we will always need some form of military, and that they will at some point be compelled to act in the interests of citizens. Our sorry excuse for a navy is the ideal place to begin with any modifications to our defensive posture. Some folks on here think that we have an awful lot of hulls in the water and that means we have an adequate defense. The reality is much different. "Canada's 33 warships, submarines, and coastal defense vessels are divided more or less evenly between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts." There is no Arctic fleet. Unfortunately we also require sufficient air assets to protect our Arctic territory because all we can apply to this area in terms of naval assets is submarines. I will again state that this represents an opportunity in the form of problem resolution in this respect. Many jobs and businesses will be created in order to solve this problem. Tax dollars will be created in the effort, in fact it can really be said that we have the means available to offset much economic pressure and fiscal pressure by simply addressing this matter of national security.

In the last five decades, the west has not displayed many Liberal tendencies. People like to blame Trudeau for everything but that is not the reality of things.

The Canadian military at present is wholly inadequate for our defensive needs. We are incapable of defending any of our three coastlines let alone the land border with the United States. That border however is of little import in as much as we have nothing to fear from American military interests at the moment. Now if we did have those types of concerns, we would be screwed because we simply cannot defend ourselves against the might of America. What concerns me is that our three coastlines are basically undefended. That needs to be addressed as a matter of sovereignty. Should we fail to start developing and utilizing the northern portion of this nation we will forfeit the Arctic islands, use it or lose it. Our immediate concern is our current stance with respect to peace keeping. We have abandoned this stance and opted for aggressive force on foreign shores. That move requires an immediate increase in military expenditures. The force composition alone is insufficient for the missions required. To summarize, we can neither defend our own nation nor can we conduct projected force operations outside of it. In short we are sending our sons and daughters into harms way armed with little more than a smile.

We can get off our collective behinds and start doing something. What we can do is write our MP's and give them a piece of our mind. We can also collect signatures from our neighbors and deliver them to the MP's as a petition. The question is should we do something? I say that we should, but I am only one man. WE can't turn back the clock, so the money given to GM and Chrysler should be considered gone. But there is an opportunity to start putting things together in a manner that would serve the purpose of the nation. Specifically a little forward planning is in order. The idea in the forefront of my mind is that citizens should petition the government to institute a system whereby individual participation on a voluntary basis should be made available in a forum that would facilitate the organization of concepts relative to the public will. I know that this sounds like a rather convoluted statement, but I simply doubt know how else to phrase it! We need the opportunity to have a national will created and utilized in the best interests of the nation. It seems to me that the House of Commons is incapable of undertaking such a role, it is a very partisan environment. We need solutions for Canadians, not politicians. They are their own problem. We need our problems addressed.

We stand between the USA and Russia, that makes us pretty darned important to them.

Harper needs to do something to make him look really smart and very much in control of this nation. He has an opportunity before him, whether or not he does anything with it is another story. Chrysler is not belly up in Canada, but the parent company is in the states. If creditors hold things up seeking big bucks instead of pennies on the dollar, the Canadian portion of the company will have to bite the dust. As it stands everything is or will be shutdown for an undefined period of time. So it would not be just be the CAW guys on the street, but a lot of parts guys too.

It would seem to me that there is more than one way to skin a cat. We need to consider the plight of our economy as well as the future needs of defense. It costs a great deal to field a military force and much of that expense is realized through procurement of weapons and systems designed and manufactured outside of this nation. One way to reduce that expense is doing things in house, so to speak. We do this with our naval vessels, not aircraft and not armor. There is a lesson there to be learned. We need only design and implement a defensive strategy for three sides of our nation, all of which involves shorelines, with an added bonus of ice in the north. The forth side being the USA, and given the fact thatthere is no defense against nor needed on that front we are able to save a great deal on land defense. That leaves air and sea defense. So it boils down to what can we do to properly address these two facets. Aircraft carriers is what we actually need. Now in order to do that properly we need to look at carrier battle groups because that is what we ultimately require. Since we were looking at a stimulus package anyway, why not kill two birds with one stone. If we are going to spend a lot of money, why not at least spend it to get something we need done?

In my view, the government has made a very large mistake. They have just entered a new phase of bureaucratic foolishness and have begun to throw good money(OUR TAX dollars) after bad (private equity) in order to make an attempt that is hoped to save some citizen employment. Even taking a very shallow and uninformed view, such as my own, these are the first steps in the socialization of the no longer free market economy. All kinds of doors have been opened and it will be no mean feat to put the genie back in the bottle. All the big corporate dogs who get themselves into trouble now eye federal help and our tax dollars as a way out for their problems. It is time to reconsider our politics people before we give away the rest of the store.

Mr. Klein, I am a resident of Alberta in a small little village called Rich Valley. My question for you is simply this; in your opinion, why should this province not utilize its available resources to extensively develop secondary industry based upon our natural resource wealth? Let me explain the direction of this question in order to make your response more to the point. While we have enjoyed a vast amount of industrial development under the PC Party, a majority of that was undertaken by foreign investment, which in turn exports their profits out of the province as fast as they can. In my opinion, citizens would realize a net benefit from the efforts made by the province in some form of provincial crown corporate effort capitalized with the use of the Heritage Trust Fund with a continued revenue stream provided by the profits generated by the financial arm of the government by means of the Alberta Treasury Branch. Jerry J. Fortin

Its time to make some choices people. Capitalism or something else, because we are rapidly headed toward something else. Having tax dollars grease the wheels of corporate efforts headed toward Chapter 11 cases for businesses headquartered in the US does very little for the citizens. Yes there are some employees who will see benefit, yet their numbers are relatively low when compared to those who have already lost their jobs or who are about to lose their jobs. In Canada, the Chrysler group represents about 10,000 employees, and we have already dumped billions on this failing company. We have been told that we must either deliver even more money which s to say billions more, stop Revenue Canada from collecting taxes owed, and have the workers take a huge pay cut of 25%. Looks nice on a balance sheet as a proposal, but utter lacks any kind of reasonable reality based problem resolution being run by a government with a minority in the House of Commons. Here is what I think should happen; call their hand. Lets see if they have the balls to play. I suggest that the government refuse to hand over any more money as a first step. The next move should be seeking the taxes owed to the government, equal treatment with citizens. You either pay or the government starts to seize accounts and property to cover the debts. The next step is to show them the door to the exit. Tell them to have a nice day, and engage a very good lawyer because they will need one to retain any Canadian assets, those are forfeit until their debts are paid. Those debts will also include any pension moneys owed to Canadian citizen workers. Its time to get serious about the problems people. Governments cannot and should not be involved in the banking and credit sectors, they should not be bailing out corporations and subsidizing business efforts. Tax dollars are for the care and funding of programs and services related to the wants and needs of citizens.

Justice is a very relative thing. It is also an excellent measure of a specific jurisdiction in their efforts towards improving the human condition. Keep in mind justice is expensive and all societies tend to be measured upon the willingness to spend on the public behalf. In this nation of social policies and liberal dispositions, conservatism is very nearly a dirty word. The political party of Conservatives is a far cry from the traditional meaning of the word.

In my view, the problem isn't one in which there is a lack of wealth transfer from the old to the young within the family unit, but instead the wealth transfer between the public and private ventures in the form of subsidies and tax breaks and incentives. There is a fundamental difference in the treatment of individuals and business efforts in this and most other nations. I believe it represents a very real as opposed to potential hazard to the financial well being of citizens. The average citizen is a worker, who is taxed from birth to death subsidizing the existence of the less and more fortunate inside our society. I believe we are on the cusp of an entire new a different phase of human development. Technology is the key to our future and yet it is manipulated by the powers that be to their own ends without concern for the general population. We have the capability to feed every single human on this planet. We have the ability to avoid or prevent wars and famines that would shorten the lifespan of individual, yet strangely we do not pursue the solutions to our problems. We are seemingly stuck in the evolution of society between the rise of democracy and the city states and the information age. Even though we can now communicate without the concern of language or religious barriers, we still seem to get lost in cultural arrogance. How can this be? The goal of humanity should not be limited to the survival of the species, but instead the improvement of the human condition. We are failing to realize the opportunities that have become feasible through technological development. We remain fragmented and isolated as individuals even as the world slowly shift toward global economic models. The advancements of our society are being limited by our commercial and economic endeavours to the detriment of the individual. We are focused upon dollars and cents instead of peace and happiness. We have embarked upon a path that is rapidly removing the options and freedoms of the individual in favour of the business interests of the monetary system with all its attending concerns and influences upon our consumer based society. The danger to society as I see it is the degradation of individual rights and freedoms and the rise of corporatism.

We shall see what happens. Iggy has a long and difficult road ahead of him. Yet his path is not as difficult as Harpers. Stevie the Wonder Politician is about to face some very real problems.

What can I say? There have been rumours of a new political party, right of centre, yet green strangely. Something else to look at here. The left is out of focus and the PC Party is far from where they should be. Alberta citizens don't want warm and fuzzy left of centre politics, they want less government, less taxes and fiscal responsibility. Contrary to popular belief, it was the Liberals who sought budget restraints and forced the PC's into some responsibility. Even so, that was a long time ago, and the government has changed since. No longer do the representatives elected by the people seek reasonable solutions, they have grown fat at the trough. Alberta needs a party in power that has fiscal restraint at the core of its being. It needs to have a viable development plan that incorporates a secondary industry strategy that is designed to take advantage of our natural resource wealth without giving away the store in the process. It needs a leadership with more than balls, it needs a spine and a brain as well. Alberta needs many things, but leadership to weather the storm is the key.

Really? No corporations donate money in any way shape or form to political parties? Corporations sponsor no events or fund raisers? No corporation pays for any hundred dollar a plate dinners? No corporation pays lobbyists to attract media attention? All these things represent a form of support with a monetary cost associated with it. I can understand why some folks would deny it, but that doesn't mean there is no truth to it now does it?

The Progressive Conservatives, lead by "Special Ed" continue to spend like drunken sailors. Billions of dollars have been removed from the planned spending of corporations in Alberta. It goes beyond the oil patch by a large margin now. Everything from real estate to retail sales have taken a nosedive here. It has impacted the citizens desire to utilize their disposable income in any manner beyond paying down debt and avoiding major purchases. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs, and there are more employment issues coming. This was once an agrarian culture, until oil was discovered. Now we rely on the oil patch for more employment than we used to for the farms. When it, the patch, takes a hit, then a major proportion of our domestic product takes a hit. Things are getting real tough in Alberta. While Alberta citizens find ways to spend less money, our government seeks ways to spend more. In the face of shrinking revenues, increases in expenditures are an exercise in fiscal stupidity. Yet for some unknown reason, our government fails to see the futility of throwing money around that they simply don't have. The average citizens understands the impact of economic events to a much greater degree than our elected representatives. Even so, a vast majority of folks think that the way out of this current problem can be found with having the government give tax dollars to corporate efforts to stimulate the economy. I say that they are wrong. You cannot spend your way of of a recession with such ease.

You suggest that the Conservatives do not have any corporate donors. I suggest that you are attempting to mislead people with a statement like that.

Alberta is bleeding capital and jobs at a rate far higher than other locations. Even so, having a government dump money on a package that will cost far more than it benefits is still perplexing to say the least.