hitops

The difference which I'm sure you've blocked out, is that the people working for those companies have the choice to work elsewhere. We don't have the choice to not pay for the hangers-on, whether corporate or otherwise. The welfare state is far more costly than corporate hand-outs however. Medicare alone eats nearly half our money on its own. The wealthiest folks have no need for that service, they quite prefer to use private care. Yes those would be the people in the highest tax bracket. If only the native groups believed that. But their plan is always the same - give us more cash. No to them it is certainly all about money.

Interesting, it says this: Reforming Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system so that a party’s share of the popular vote is more closely reflected in its share of the seats in the House of Commons. Trudeau would institute a preferential ballot, wherein voters would rank their choices and the winner in each riding would need to capture more than 50 per cent of the vote. But when I checked Justin's website at the start of this thread, it said he was against proportional representation. That section of his website is currently unavailable. So who knows?

Not likely. Who cares? Let them book their meeting anywhere they want, just like everyone else.

I'm not in a need of a history lesson. Iran was not a democracy. Hitler was democratically elected too.

Iran wasn't a democracy in 1953, or any other time. We should stand with democracies.

You don't seem to feel the need to substantiate anything you are saying. The dept of Indians affairs exists, eats billions. Fact. There is a difference because we have institutionalized a difference. That is the whole problem. If we had treated them like every other minority group in Canada, in other words like fully-functional human beings and not semi-functional children who need handouts, things would be a lot different. This is relevant how?

I'm proud that Canada is willing to stand with Israel despite it not being popular. They are THE only democratic, civilized and modern country in the entire middle east. Actually they are downright socialist in many ways. The big difference between Israel and other socialist-style countries of the west, is that Israel is the only one who is surrounded by neighbors who want to destroy them. Hence, their foreign policy is a little different than those of us who live in countries that are not full of people bent on killing us because of difference in religion. We should stand with secular democracies, not with third-world hovels who still can't even guarantee the same rights to women much less any other group. Beating your wife silly is a legitimate disciplinary strategy in the countries that hate Israel. If you are supporting those countries, understand the culture you are supporting. Israel is literally centuries ahead on basically every social issue. Hamas is not interested in peace, it wants to destroy Israel on principle, not because of any land issues. Same for hezbollah. If a peaceful solution is found that allows Palestinians to achieve stability and prosperity, that would undercut the entire narrative that those groups need to survive. Peace is a direct threat to them, and they will never want it.

All the more reason to get rid of the dept Indian affairs. Whether local chiefs or politicians are eating the money, it's my tax money and don't want it wasted.

Ya I don't think anyone really cares that much. It's too bad somebody wants to abuse themselves, but holding yourself hostage for other people's money seems already to be a dated tactic.

It's just such a bizarre situation. The native trusts which are funded by us, are somehow proof that we aren't paying for it? That is the same argument as 'the RBC is not replacing employees.....because it hired another company which is replacing employees.' The gov is getting a little tougher with them in last 10 years, and it is starting to make a difference. In some places like the prairies, many are working in the resource sector and improving their lives. If only we could scrap indian affiars entirely, that gap would be close in under a generation.

In no way does that guarantee them access to my tax dollars. Yet, that's the situation we have. I clearly said it applied to anyone who acts that way, not an entire people group. It applies equally to anyone who wants to depend on the state for subsistence. But you're not hearing that because its easier to just call people racists than deal with the problem. You must be used to talking to some very uninformed people highly willing to drink the cool-aid. We pour literally billions into reserves every year, above and beyond the usual benefits Canadians get including natives. Natives get all the benefits of being Canadian that everyone else does. In addition, 7.5B is spent through the department of indian and northern affairs, that the rest of us do not benefit from. It's not our fault if natives want to live up north where it's 10x more expensive to live. If you want to do that, you should be willing and able to pay for it. Otherwise you should not ask the rest of us to pay. Your arguments are the same old argument that will guarantee another generation of natives will remain an underclass, forever the victims, and passing on that reality to their children. People coming form other countries, starting from scratch with literally nothing, seem to adapt just fine. But the group here in Canada with tons of programs and financial perks, can't seem to do it. What they and you don't get, is that the programs are perks are the reason. If we provided the same benefits to new immigrant Canadians, we could quickly mire them in the same cycle.

Xenophobia is a dislike or fear of people from other countries or of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. Are they from another country? No. Are they perceived to be foreign? No, we are all exposed to them all the time and very familiar with this group, especially here in MB. Are they strange? Not in any sense beyond anybody else. It has nothing to do with education, and I am highly educated (postgrad degree). That's why I can easily recognize you have mis-used this word. You don't know the definition of xeonophobic. I would start there because words do matter if you are trying to make a coherent argument. Japanese are xenophobic. They make it almost impossible to work in vast sectors of the economy if you are not Japaneses or don't adapt perfectly to Japanese language and culture. They dislike foreigners. We do the exact opposite, we make allowances, wave costs, provide support in various ways so that it's easier for natives than any other group in Canada. That is the opposite of xenophobic. I think you have heard the word xenophobic, you thought it sounded good and you added to your bag of 'words for people I don't like' but you have no clue what it means. You desperately want this to be about a racial issue, or some kind of inherent dislike for a people group. But it's not, and I think you actually know this. It's about people being dependent, lazy, hopeless, and making the rest of us pay for it. It doesn't matter if it's native people or little green men from mars. In this case it happens to be a large chunk of the native population, but they far from the only ones. The worst part about native privileges is that they institutionalize native poverty and dependence. I'm arguing for raising the standard of native living in this country, you are arguing for making sure they stay where they are. You just don't know it.

I don't need an explanation of how market forces work. My question was about how you came to the conclusion that this move was 'better'. I don't see much evidence for that. The service will clearly be worse, we all know that from experience with outsourcing in other areas. RBC will suffer some blowback and lose a bunch of accounts, which we have seen because of the coverage. Furthermore RBC was making tons of money, so they obviously did not need these particular foreign workers to do that. So I'm not really sure this will actually benefit them. You seem to believe that any warm body is interchangeable with the next in any job. That's obviously not the case, the quality of service, experience and skills of the locals represent a lot of value, that means real value in the free market. We're not talking about firing a few bolts and pulling a few levers, we're talking about IT support which requires more skill. And again the issue here is not about market fundamentals. It is about illegal use of the temp worker program. That program is to bring workers to Canada, employed by Canadian companies, to do work in Canada where nobody else will. It is not for bringing in people to train them for your overseas contractors and then go do the work overseas.

Only in the modern bizarro world of politics, does wanting to treat everyone equally become 'xenophobic'. Could not possibly be more off base. We want the native to engage and be a productive part of society, that is the opposite of xenophobic.

Better off implies you have some ability to objectively make that judgment. On what basis exactly?

Are credit unions safe from that?

You make a trade-off with protectionist laws though. You preserve jobs for some, but you make it more difficult for others to find jobs. You also lose economically to other countries. When there are too many laws protecting workers, you start to lose ground as a nation. Tons of examples of this in Europe right now. They have been protecting their workers far better than we do for decades. Now they have nearly wrecked their entire economies. Portugal at one time was a major player. Today they are an afterthought. Spain has an unemployment rate of 25%. France has an unemployment rate of 25% for young people WITH university degrees. Almost every European country has lost ground.compared to the US and Canada, and certainly compared to China. Just to give you an idea of how really European style polices have really worked. They are literally at the point of bank runs and loss of assets for depositors, and have made laws to allow for more. This is pure, 100%, the clear and predictable results of the bloated social state and economic protections. Canada has been going in the opposite direction. While everyone hates on our government, we have been gaining ground, gaining stature. And we've been doing all that stuff people don't like - like exploiting resources, bringing in workers, lowering corporate tax rates, reducing entitlements. All the stuff that has again and again proven to bring more prosperity to a nation. We don't want to be China with horrendous pollution and limited rights, but can't be Europe if we want to survive.

Don't forget cannibalizing income from Vegas and online sources. That's all gain.

Oh man don't get me started on what. They are indeed wasting my time, which is like wasting my money. That is a cost to me. Therefore I would choose an institution who minimizes that cost. This should incentivize a bank to want to appeal to customers and cater to that. I guess the demand just is not high enough. I bank with BMO and one of the reasons is because the menu is fast, and you speak to a normal, mature sounding anglophone who can help you. I would however, be more than willing to to pay $5-10 more per year to never have to speak to a machine. I would if that would work as a business model? You know how you can pay subscriptions to some streaming internet services to avoid ads? Think about it......pay $9.99 per year to never speak with a machine...... LOL. You are so right, honestly what kind of retards are they expecting would call for that? Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge, I guess there are probably a bunch of old people who might do that. And they tend to have all the money.....

I don't know that much detail about the teacher salary sources. What I do know is that at least once or twice per month I say the following sentence "If only I could shop on Amazon.com rather than .ca" This is simplistic example but explains the differences I'm talking about in purchasing power. Obviously 40K USD in some Africans countries would let you live like a king. That's where PPP comes in as a useful metric. If you want to get technical, you can check nationmaster.com which has all kinds of cool statistics. It's very difficult to properly calculate purchasing power parity because goods don't always move in the same direction vis a vis cost. Some people use the 'big mac index' or the 'can of coke' index which basically calculates how many man-hours of work it takes to get a big mac or coke in a given country. Ultimately the measure is how much do you have to work to get stuff? The reasons big mac and coke are used is because they are available pretty much everywhere. Of course, shipping costs, local foods costs etc are all different so it's far from perfect. There is not perfect way to determine this.

Oh man huge amen to that. Those menus are the worst. I just mash 0 in the hopes that it will trigger a diversion to a rep as soon as possible. The voice ones are even more frustrating. Many technologies make things better, that is a perfect example of one that makes things slower and more difficult. I have never understood how that saves them money. At least 2-3 min is wasted on every single call listening to that crap. The options are almost the plain obvious stuff you would have already done online. If you actually need to call, it's never for one of the reasons presented. Would be more efficient just to have a person pick up the phone on first dial, and spend 5 sec transferring you in the right direction.

Another note, after some hunting around I was happy to find that the finance minister also sees the light. From last year: http://business.financialpost.com/2012/04/27/cmhc-could-be-pulled-out-of-mortgage-insurance-business-flaherty-says/ “Over time, I don’t think it’s essential that a government financial institution provide mortgage insurance in Canada,” he told the FP’s editorial board.

I don't know what Mulroney did but I would fully support anyone who no longer wanted to put up with the money sink that is native reservations. It's politically dangerous though, as it is simply too easy to manipulate Canadians into thinking that person is just a hater. The CPC are the best candidate to do it, although too many people hate them right now. They are at least doing something with those work programs. I wonder if the Liberals could.......they might but on the other hand Justin Trudeau? Doubtful. The NDP obviously would just exacerbate the problem, happily condemning further generations to the poverty cycle for votes.

On the other hand the people who will throw their money away will just do it at other casinos or online. Might as well get them to throw it away towards government coffers. I don't see crime playing a big role, as this is no longer the 1970's and this thing would be loaded up and down with government oversight and regulations.

The difference of course, is that we're not talking about machines which can do the job better, or even people who can do the job better. We are talking about people who can do the job worse. Regardless my argument is not against outsourcing. My argument is against protectionist policies for our banks, which are an even large distortion of the free market. Given that we have the protections, which are bad, we might as well convert those protections into protections of domestic jobs. The best case scenario of course, would be to get rid of all of them.