Just Me

A question for you and others. Does protection extend to acting on those beliefs? In other words, if one believes that a fetus is a human life, would it not be the moral responsibility of the believer to take all legal means to protect those lives? If protection doesn't extend to actions, what protection to freedom of religion is actually provided by the charter?

Ginsy, I few thoughts, as my oldest son is a year away from university and having to think about the same decisions. There are a number of jobs (engineering, accounting, medical jobs, the trades) that require specialized knowledge and training. If these jobs interest you university / college are about getting the knowledge needed for the specific job (and typically to pass a certification exam). Following this process tends to lead most easily to a good job right out of university / college, as long as you pick a career path where there are job openings (eg. not a teacher in Ontario). The alternative is taking a more general program in university / college. Typically the path a job after school is not nearly as well defined, and will require more effort (and probably time) on your part to find or work your way into a "good" job. One of the biggest challenges you will face is standing out from the very large pool of candidates with similar qualifications. In both cases your success (in any career) will depend ultimately on your effort, ability to think and creativity. Now 20 odd years, and 5 very different jobs after graduation, I've seen many different paths people have taken to successful and / or rewarding work, and what program they took in university / college seems to play a pretty minor part in that, it's what they've done after words that makes the difference. However it's also clear to me that taking one of the social studies programs or less specific career less focused programs, in no way makes people better thinkers, more open or gives them any other better "qualities". If you are interested in learning you can do that as easily inside or outside of university.

A couple of random thoughts. I don't think most of our opinions or decisions are make based on any supportable evidence. Try to have discussion around questions like: -Should Canada buy the F35 - Is it safe to leave your baby in the car while you run into the store - You should obey the speed limit - Raising minimum wage is a good/bad thing? You will get strongly developed opinions, and and decisions that are not based on any evidence whatsoever. Where people do pull up evidence, it usually wasn't actually used to make the decision, but is looked for after the fact to justify the opinion or decision. I think we live a huge amount of our life based on "faith", because there really is no other choice. However I would argue that "faith" is not the same definition of "faith" used in a religious context. The 2nd random thought is this: By definition, religion deals with the supernatural, which falls outside the realm of science, and for the most part outside the realm of factual evidence (though some claims of religion can be tested against facts). In the case of religion, evidence aligns more closely with legal evidence than scientific evidence. While facts play part, they will seldom be conclusive.

Bob and Waldo Agreed. Costs of production and distribution are very different for different places, and governments have played all sort of silly games that make the real costs all but impossible to determine. However, unless I'm completely confused, that wasn't what this thread was about. This thread was about the cost to the end consumer of electricity. The end consumer doesn't care about any of that, they just care what the cost is to them. This is where I'm lost by Waldo's response. As far as the cost of electricity to the end consumer, why can't we get that cost just by dividing the bill (minus the tax to get rid of that variable), but the number of kWh. I'm honestly trying to understand, why this doesn't make sense.

I can't figure out how to quote or copy and paste for some reason, so don't hold that against me... Waldo, I don't follow your paragraph starting with if..if Why is it not valid to take the total bill and divide it by KhW used to get the actual cost of electricity (at least in Ontario)?

Topaz, you are correct, there is all sorts of costs buried in the price of electricity, some totally valid, probably not but governments have played so many games of moving stuff between our taxes and the electricity bills I'm not sure anyone really understands what we are really paying for at this point. (Whether you agree with the sale of Ontario Hydro or not, it should at least provide clarity as to the real costs & prices going forward). It's going to get even worse for those on fixed/low incomes, as the OEB has decided that it is more fair for the distribution costs to be fixed rather than per KWh. This essentially means that low electricity users will end up subsidizing the higher electricity users (of which I'm one). I cannot understand their reasoning on this one. (Distribution costs won't be fully fixed, but a much higher percentage of them will be).

Can I suggest that everyone posting numbers actually verify they are comparing apples to apples... For Ontario, the electricity prices posted by Waldo are only half the bill, there are also distribution costs. Worst, much of the distribution cost is fixed, meaning that the less electricity you use, the higher your real cost per kWh. I have followed this very closely for about 10 years, reading regulatory documents, and tracking predicted costs and my real costs in a spreadsheet over the same period. I can validate that for someone in rural Ontario, the actual cost is around 18-22c / KWh. The variation comes from that fixed cost. Urbanites get off a little cheaper. I don't believe Manitoba has the same system & the 9c / kWh is the total cost there, but I'm not positive about this, Please correct me if I'm wrong. As an aside - I can't believe the crap that gets spewed by folks of all political positions on MLW who don't of a clue about what they are talking about. What's the point of trying to win an argument by spewing facts that are blatantly wrong. Would it not be a more useful and interesting place if we trying to learn from each other, even if end we don't "win" the argument.

Overthere, I don't disagree with your description of the challenges with Canada's public service (most individuals within the public service do there best, but the whole management structure and culture is horribly flawed), but that's for another day and another topic. In regards to contracting out - I'm not against it (I'm a consultant, so essentially all my work comes from companies contracting out). However in the private sector, everyone has a common motive, profit, that can be used as a measuring stick. In the public sector, there are goals that are much harder to quantify. For example in health care, if you contract out without somehow quantifying health outcomes, the contractor can trade increased profit (eg less nurses) against lower health care outcomes. If you contract out teaching, the contractor can increase class sizes until education outcomes suffer. The private sector is very creative in increasing profit. It is a challenge when contracting out public services to ensure that creativity doesn't lead to reduce "service" in areas that are difficult to measure, but in practice very real. I do think a public payor, private delivery system for public services is actually one of the best models in theory, but to put in place without acknowledging its potential downsides, and figuring how to address them would be irresponsible.

Contracting out could be the answer but has a couple of challenges: 1) It should be more expensive, as it has to allow for a profit, on top of the overhead of managing a large contract 2) Government is very poor at defining and enforcing service level agreements that ensure that the contractor doesn't increase profit by reducing service. 3) Some services (e.g. police) probably can't be contracted out. Another alternative is arbitration, but from what I've seen, arbitration tends to compare benefits to the highest public comparator rather than an average comparator in the public or private sector, leading to continually escalating benefits from each arbitration.

In the private sector there is a natural balance between companies and unions. If unions ask for too much, the company eventually goes bankrupt. If the company offers too little, employee's leave. Assuming the government doesn't interfere, for the most part, unions and management will act rationally and negotiate a settlement that is reasonably fair and lies somewhere between these two extremes. In the public sector, the difficulty is two fold. First there is no balance against the unions asking for too much, as it is relatively easy for the government t o accommodate the "demands" of the union, via increasing it's debt (or other means that have no short term consequences). Additionally, when a private company is on strike or locked the pain felt by the it's customers is relatively limited as there are typically alternative providers they can turn to for the same service. However with public services, this is not the case, which puts significant pressure for public entities to settle regardless of the cost. Secondly, the government can avoid negotiation through legislation which allows them to avoid the consequences of poor "management" decisions. This seems to lead to feast / famine cycles in regards to pay/benefit increase in the public sector. Public sector employees certainly deserve the right to unionize, and negotiate their salaries and benefits. However it seems that an alternative mechanism, that approximates the balance that exists in the private sector would be preferable. Does anyone have any ideas for fair alternatives?

To take this discussion in a slightly different direction. How do we define what a man or woman is if not by biological sex? If we can't define it how can we argue if someone is man or woman?

Argus, While having government managed pensions (CPP) is certainly a good thing as a fall back to provide a minimum level of income, or for those that don't want to manage their own pension, there is a number of reasons that I'm against forcing everyone to make it their main sorurce of funding for retirement: 1) It's managed very conservatively. This is a good thing given it's purpose, but given it's conservative nature, the contributions would have to be rediculously high to allow it be the only source of retirement income. Given that I have no pension plan from the private companies I've worked for, I need to be able to put my money somewhere with higher growth to support me in retirement. 2) The stocket market is not really very risky of difficult to take advantage of as long as you think long term. A balanced porfolio of mutual funds won't provide the best return, but is almost guranteed to beat inflation over the longer run. While mutual fund advisors will not recommend the best funds, most of them will build a reasonable portfolio. 3) There are other ways of taking advanage of the stock market, such as ETFs and index or passive investing that again are almost garunteed to do better than inflation in the long term, very low risk In other words, keep the CPP, let people increase how much they put in if that is their preference, but don't force all of us into a crappy retirement funded onlly by CPP.

But here's the problem, having put all that work in, you changed the MP of a single riding, which given the election didn't come down to a single riding victory, means that all your work, had absolutely not pratical impact on the policies of goverenment. Even if it did result in a change of governement, one then has to believe that changing the governing party will result in changes that will have a postitive impact on at least a substantial number of Canadians. Given that any party in Canada makes it into power will essentially govern from the center, and the difficulty of predicting that complete impact of any particular policy, assuming a positive impact from any particular party being in power is at best a crap-shoot. Given that we all have limited time to spend, I'd suggest that there are much more effetive ways to impact on the lives of people than being involved in politics. The same amount of money and effort donated to a homeless shelter (or deserving charity of your choice) likely would have had a much larger and predicatable postitive impact. If every a party was to propose new ideas that would actually have a real effect on fixing the various problems in Canada, it might be worthwhile to work to put them in power, however as no party wants to take that risk, and all of them are instead on simply going with the status quo, while appealing to the short term interests of their particular consituency to bribe themselves into power, it seems pointless to put any time or effort into helping them.

Without a doubt you are right (and you sound like you know a lot more about Greece than I do), however I think my point stands that the mechanisms that the public sector lacks the mechanisms that exist in the private sector to effectively provide balance to the demands of public sector unions. You are also correct that the voters and goverment are at fault as well. However given that governments are unlikely to start putting long term econmic goals ahead of getting back into office, and the public is just as unlikely to put the effort into understanding the long term effects of government agreements with union (assuming they have the ability and necessary information to do so), I think we need mechanisms to ensure public sector benefits remain inline with the economy's ability to support them and inline with the benefits of similar posistions within the private sector. The question is how to do this both effectively and fairly (to those in the public sector). Arbitration? Using the private sector as a benchmark, and then allowing the unions to negotiate as long as the final result in roughly in line with the benchmark? Having the public sector employer and union each submit a single offer, one of which is then chosen as being the most reasonable by an independent panel? There's got to be a better way then we have today!

Been reading for a while, but just decided to join so I could post. There is a natural balance between companies and unions in the private sector - if unions ask for too much - eventually the company goes bankrupt. If the companies offer too little, employee's will move to other companies. Assumeing the goverenment doesn't interfere, for the most part the unions and companies will act rationally and negotiate a settlement that is somewhere between these two points. In the public sector, the difficulty is that the is no balance agains the union asking for too much, as it is very easy for the government to simply accomodate the "demands" of the union via increasing it's debt. Addtionally when a private company is on strike / locked out, the public typically doesn't feel a lot of pain as there are usually alternative service providers. However this is not the case for government services and thus there is a lot of pressure on public entities to settle, no matter the cost. Actually, there is an eventual balance, when the government goes banckrupt (see Greece) but the feedback loop is so long, that it is completely ineffective at provideing a balance in the (typically) 3-5 year cycles for labour negotiations. That being said, public employees deserve to be allowed to unionize, and negotiate their salaries and benefits. I think we just need to find a mechanism the approximates the balance that exists naturally in the private sector. I've put a fair amount of though into this, and haven't come up with any workable ideas? Maybe somewhere out there has some?