hitops

Ok I admit you can measure some aspects of workload, but not really the subjective ones. The perception of workload can vary drastically between individuals with the same workload. No I don't believe 'just accept mediocrity' and move on makes sense at all. In companies that have used the lean model successfully, they certainly don't. They LEAN up by caning useless people. We have zero ability to do that, in the most critical areas. That's because they are businesses. We are not, we are a bureaucratic, government institution. We have interests that have leverage to make sure it can't touch them. What's left over is irrelevant minutia. I would probably be the first to argue against the status quo here. I think you're missing my point, I favor a large disruption in how we do things. I just know LEAN can't accomplish this because of the walled-off protection of the areas it would make the biggest difference. Let me give you an example: I am given x number of patient to see. My colleagues also often see the same patients, and we offer treatment in coordination. We are a very rural province, so many patient must travel 4-5 hours each way to see me, and then again to see my colleague. It is easier for me, and I have every right, to just insist patients see me only on scheduled days, which may be a different day than my colleagues. But I don't insist on that, I adjust my schedule instead so that I see the patient on the same day as my colleague, and save them the extra trip. This is a big time and cost saver to the patient. Not only does this happen without LEAN, if it didn't happen, because of the entrenched unions and protections, there's nothing LEAN could do to make it happen. In the areas LEAN can affect, it seems to just add pointless paper-pushing. LEAN is the subject of jokes, and a source of frustrating to everyone I've asked who would much rather just get to work accomplishing something. Nobody is helped, when I sit through 8 hours of hearing the story of Toyota. A bunch of people are helped, if I use that time to see a bunch of patients or do some actual work. A rural patient is helped, if I go out of my routine to fit them in the same day they see my colleague. Nobody is helped, if I have to review yet another piece of paper and perform a redundant documentation task. The most efficient people I meet, are often nurses of the older generation who have the ability to use old-fashioned common sense in how they approach problems. LEAN makes these people less effective, and favors people who buy into the LEAN message over people who accomplish work. Full disclosure: I am 100% paid by the provincial government. I would gladly work privately, but I am not legally allowed to offer my service to anyone else but gov.

To get evidence of voter fraud, you would need a way to detect it, and you would need to look for it. If I don't look outside all day, I can safely say that I have 'no evidence' that life exists outside my office.

Always a good question, but I can tell you with full honesty that I love my job and enjoy every day of work. This is partly just personal philosophy towards work attitude. You can't measure staffing shortages, if your answer is to just making less staff do more work. If you just move the goalposts of what full staffing means, you can reduce staff and increase stress without ever having to acknowledge a shortage on paper. You get more sick calls, more mistakes, worse outcomes when this happens. Should certain people do a lot more work for the sake of the taxpayer? Yes. Can LEAN deal with this? No. What will happen is that good employees will strain themselves more and result in more risk to patients,while lazy ones will not change. LEAN cannot deal with the unions, so it cannot deal with this problem. I like the idea of LEAN in principle. It works great in real life in a factory like Toyota. It doesn't work in government delivery of services, because it deal with the inherent problems. Meanwhile, it can certainly make us all jump through a lot of hoops and waste a lot of time. I've had to attend at least 20+ hours of LEAN related meetings and lit. I can't think of a single thing that has benefited any of my patients, saved money, or saved time so far. I can point to a few things that have added complexity, added time and made patients wait longer.

There is NO independent confirmation of these numbers. This is old hat for government. You pick the numbers where there are improvements, and try to ignore the ones where there is deterioration. Or, you just ignore the un-measurable costs like decreased job satisfaction for employees, staffing shortages, or impacts on patient care. You CAN get better numbers on the money side if you push hard enough. You WILL have to accept that there will be patient-care cost to that. No government will ever be honest enough to admit that. In principle I completely agree with you. Working in health and seeing how things work, I can tell you that LEAN will never, and can never actually address the largest and most important inefficiencies in the system. A typical example from just this week: We are being told we should have standardized reporting sheets for a certain patient outcome of treatment. This will involve more paperwork, more computer programs, more time for nurses, docs and patients. It's adding FAT, not removing it. The LEAN objectives are in conflict with each other. A lot of the public will love the idea of LEAN. What they don't understand is that this will not actually improve anything for them.

You're definitely right it comes from the top and everyone is forced to play along. But it's also circular, the public demands better services, the top needs to point to something to show they are listening. A new name, fresh coat of paint and a few cherry-picked numbers are the political answer. Meanwhile wait times do not improve, drs offices still run behind, and the patient experience is no better. So then the next government some out with a new repackaged slogan to once again make it sound like they are listening. Rinse, and repeat with next government. The real issues are not being address. They are: 1) Free health care for all with all the latest and greatest drugs and gadgets, delivered quickly and on demand, is a myth. Government should grow a spine and find out what people want, and clearly tell them the consequences. If free, good and fast, that will mean user fees, or dramatically increased taxes. If you settle for 2 of the 3, you need to tell people honestly that you can't have the 3rd one. 2) You will never deal with efficiency problems when the majority of your workforce is protected by unions. One of the unions fundamental functions to avoid becoming LEAN, almost by definition. Until those two points get addressed, it's nothing but papering over until you get through the next election. LEAN cannot deal with either.

Well no because: 1) That would now become crossing for commercial purposes, which has different rules 2) Even if it wasn't, the scale of the operation needed to make it profitable, would also necessarily make the amount of goods moved large enough that it would be well worth it for CBSA guards to spend the time charging those duties. For sure, people would then have to factor the costs of an annoying and time-consuming border stop into the overall value of the trip. If they did what you said, cross-border vacationing overall would significantly decline regardless of shopping. If I know that to visit say, Seattle, will result in a 40 minute grilling and vehicle search even if I buy nothing, I may just go less often.

lol so dramatic. No, it isn't. We don't help ourselves by trying to impose equal tariffs, we just hurt ourselves. The answer to Korea inefficiently shifting wealth from it's citizens to it's auto sector, is not to do the same to our own citizens just so auto trade looks better on paper. You forgetting that committing 'suicide' as you say, means performing a 'revival' in other areas. Any vote-buying that requires deficit (which it virtually always does), affects our dollar. Markets don't like deficits in the long term. That long-term can be REALLY long if your currency is in high demand as the world's reserve currency, a luxury we do not enjoy in Canada. What you're missing here: We are not intentionally weakening our economy by allowing one-sided tariffs by Korea. You believe we are, because you are assuming the auto sector is all that exists, and all that matters. We are weakening the auto sector by allowing one-sided tariffs. We are not weakening the overall Canadian economy. While auto gets weaker, cars (both Korean care, due to lower import costs, and domestic due to need to compete with those lower costs) also get cheaper. Cheaper purchase price means more wealth in hand for Canadians, a benefit to the economy. There are costs AND benefits to imposing tariffs. You see only the benefits. This is true regardless of whether the tariffs are 'even'. Responding with our own auto tariffs will not improve the overall wealth of Canada. It will just take money from you and me and everyone else, and give it to our auto industry. Yes, if you then only look at the auto sector balance sheet, you would think that's a net positive. American woman? No I'm male, and Canadian.

Oh no question that is a factor. But honestly I think the routine waiving of fees (I've had almost $800 waived in potential duties a few years ago) comes down to a more common, boring and simple explanation; It's just a big headache for border guards to pull you over, check your stuff and receipts, and do all the paperwork required. They're own incentive is to do less work, not more. Also what do you think the cost is, to go through all that rigmarole? Both the direct costs of doing it, and indirect of making crossing the border slow and annoying for Canadians? I would think you would have to recoup at least $200 - 300 in duties from a given event to break even.

All 'wings' in the political spectrum are a direction. The CPC seems to have no real direction at this point, they are kinda just going in different directions. The CMHC loosening the rules in 2006 and using taxpayers credit to balloon liabilities, and the sudden decision to force telecom companies into certain rules, are nothing but pure left-wing policy. And both have, as expected, resulted in large costs to all Canadians and failed to help anyone. In the former case, housing is now the most expensive ever, and most over-valued in the world. In the latter, cell phone plans are now both much worse, and more expensive than previously. Both policies could easily have the Tom Mulcair stamp of approval. Dumb left ideas don't prove the conservative party is dumb. It just proves they are dumb when they pursue left ideas. Full disclosure: I do endorse some 'lefty' ideas in principle.

Exactly, it would have been far healthier to let the market correct when it was supposed to. And the downside of you avoiding loss at that time - you're not really avoiding it, you will still lose equity on your condo eventually over the next few years (unless you sell). Classic to form, the social engineers at the time wanted to use government power to make housing affordable and attainable for some. The results are that it has never been more unaffordable.

The policy was stupid, but had nothing to do with ideology. There is nothing conservative about, it is pure left-wing government interventionism, with the classic predictable unintended consequences that go with it. The C in CPC doesn't automatically make everything they do conservative. True conservative policy would be not only to be very conservative with CMHC rules, but to actually get rid of the CMHC. They did the opposite.

All good questions, none of which are clearly answered by any of our managers or consultants. Here's allegedly the basic idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_management

Right, but charging our own tariffs wont fix that. You're splitting hairs. They care about vote-buying, because this affects the strength of our dollar. I'm waiting for your point in how this relates to the DVD purchase.

No we can't. But we do to a certain extent. It's appropriate to do it when the the total wealth expands, to be reflected in the money supply. But gov's also do it to fake prosperity so they can pretend to increase funding for things (vote buying) and make it seem like the economy is moving again (such as in the US currently). What does this have to do with tariffs, or the subject?

So they are forcing us all to get LEAN management training in the health district. Gov looked at rising costs, rising needs in healthcare and decided to hire very expensive consultants to......what exactly?, nobody is really sure. We are paying $40M for this program, so far LEAN looks like a huge waste of time. The seminars are ridiculous, we make paper airplanes and talk about how we should be efficient like Toyota. Putting aside the sheer stupidity of comparing car manufacturing outcomes to patient satisfaction, it's interfering in patient care. The number of people taken away from work to listen to the propaganda alone is hugely wasteful. The fact that we are supposed to get excited about it is embarrassing and almost cult-like. To me it looks like classic avoidance of dealing with the real problems in health care. If you make a fuss and put a glossy cover story on it, you don't actually have to tell anyone the truth about health care financing realities. You can just point to LEAN and pretend you're doing something about it. I am all for changing gov operations to be more business-like. But LEAN doesn't deal with any of the core issues. While unions protect the worst and laziest nurses and support staff, and patients can eat unlimited dollars of health care and not change their behavior at all, no amount of idiot seminars will ever really make any difference. But I understand Ontario had to tolerate this s__t for a few years. Anyone have an experiences to share from out east?

Ya looks like Marois may not even win, much less have a majority.

This assumes that the tax rate itself has no effect on prosperity, which is nonsense. Low taxation is one of the reasons WHY a lot of people want to be there and consequently generate wealth. So yes Alberta could raise it's tax rate to Quebec levels......and drive people away, lowering the overall tax base.

Here's the path of money: Created out of thin air by gov (Bank of Canada), lent to big 6 banks, banks lend it out to borrowers. Borrowers include government itself, companies, individuals etc. Companies use to pay salaries. Salaries used to by DVD player, money for DVD player goes to Japanese company. Meanwhile government gives handouts to remain in power, requires borrowing for those handouts. It can sell bonds to China to raise the money, or just print money, or raise taxes, etc.

There are huge differences between deficit pay-down today and during the 90's. Back then, everybody was doing well, it was almost impossible to have a bad economy and basically every country in the western world did well in that category, no matter who was in power. This time, we are pretty much the only country with good performance. That's a huge and very important difference. Flaherty was overall fairly good, but I think his management of mortgage rules almost totally eliminates all the good. There is no larger threat to Canadian's today than the housing bubble, which is a directly result of Flaherty. Allowing 40-year, 0% down mortgages to be covered by the CMHC allowed for fake prosperity, was the most foolish long-term financial srategy in modern memory, and is now a looming disaster for a huge number of people. This was a lefty, social-engineering type strategy that is about to, predictably, backfire.

You're confusing two unrelated issues. One is that our government spends too much borrowed money paying for peoples votes, and this devalues our currency indirectly. The other is that China holds their currency down and this keeps their goods cheap. There is no necessary relationship between the two. If we had ZERO debt available for countries like China to buy, their goods would still be artificially cheap. We do NOT put ourselves into debt with every DVD purchase. Maybe our government puts us into debt by their spending habits, but that is unrelated.

Wrong, the trade deficit is only one part of the equation. You can have amazing trade numbers, but huge costs on your population (China as the obvious example). If you don't factor in the costs, looking at trade numbers on paper is meaningless. Keeping tariffs on Korean vehicles might slightly improve our trade numbers with Korea. But it also imposes increased costs on all Canadians, costs that you are not considering when you talk about the trade deficit. One narrow sliver of people benefit (people building cars), and the rest of us incur costs. The Soviet union had a WAY better trade deficit than us....no deficit at all (they didn't trade with the west). Oh and 100% protection of their own workers and production. Worked great huh? That's why you can't just look at trade numbers. Alone they mean nothing and reflect nothing about whether the status of trade is actually benefiting the population. If you think, wrongly, that the government should act to improve the balance, there is a way easier way to do this than industrial protectionism. Just do what China does - keep the currency artificially low. Then our trade numbers will look amazing. Of course you'll devastate huge amounts of Canadians wealth and shred all of our purchasing power....but at least the trade looks good!

Then you're still missing my point. My point is that it's ok for the subsidies to be one-sided. You still benefit as the one with the fewer restrictions, even if the other guy has lots.

I haven't really paid attention to this issue. Anyone care to summarize what it actually changes?

Ha... no no. You're still not getting it. I completely understand what trade is, what a balance means, and all the rest. I understand what you're saying, and it's wrong. You are factoring in only the perceived benefits, and not the costs. When you factor in the costs, it's a net negative, at the expense of everyone. It's not real productivity if every taxpayer in Canada has to subsidize auto for it to survive (which btw, is the current situation). It's only real if the industry stands on it's own feet. Subsidize means either direct subsidy, or subsidy through tariffs (reduce competition). 2 examples: 1) Subsidies. In this example, you and I are separate markets/nations. You want to trade pinneaples to me. In order to do that, you go and grow pineapples, but they kind of suck because this is Canada. They cost you $10 to grow. You offer them to me for $15, and I say no those pineapples are shabby, I will pay $10. Now you don't want to shut down your operation, so you force your other family members to each give you $1, and now you offer them to me for $10. I take the deal, you get $10 from me, and $1 x 4 from each family member, for a total of $14. Hurray a profit! Quickly write down your great trade balance in your notebook! See the problem? 2) Tariffs. IN this example, your family is your domestic market. You again want to sell pineapples, that kinda suck. You family wants to buy $8 good ones from the guy next block over. But you, as the head of the house, say no they can only buy them from you at $12. So they do, but now they have worse pinneaples, and $4 less each than they would have had. Because they have less money, they need more from you in other ways. But you don't worry about recording the costs that your family incurred by being forced to spend more, you just write down $12 on the trade balance and declare it a positive balance. See the problem? This is what you aren't seeing. Just shifting the numbers as costs onto your population so your trade balance looks better, is not actually real prosperity.

No I did understand your point. The point I'm making is that we should not be the business of protecting our domestic auto industry, or any other industry. That's true even if other countries protect theirs. When you lower trade barriers, you always benefit as a country, even if other nations do not lower theirs. You see it as a zero-sum game, where only Canada loses by lowering trade barriers is others do not. But it is not a zero-sum game. We also benefit, if only Canada lowers trade barriers, because things get cheaper for us.