Wild Bill

This is actually funny! To support your point you are using the most conceited groups in our society that are respected the least, even distrusted, by the common man.

Well, I guess I can't do any hiding. I'm not a conservative! If anything, I'm a classic liberal. Not my fault the modern liberal party is anything but that!

We've argued this before. Just because you can say that the Conservatives are bad does not automatically make Liberals good! Just because YOU say they are now different doesn't make them good! They may be different but that might mean bad in a different way! You just don't seem to be very logical in your argument. Those of us who spent decades watching the Liberals do things that we didn't respect are not going to throw all that experience away just because YOU tell us to! The Liberals will have to prove themselves before it would make sense for us to believe it. Meanwhile, you may have pointed out some negatives about the Cons but so far they have a LONG way to go to top the Liberals! This is not partisanship. This is just common sense! Any salesman knows its not enough to knock his competition. He also needs to offer something better about his own products! So far all you give is that the Cons have some faults and expect us to consider them equivalent to all we've seen with the Liberals. Even if you were right, tie goes to the incumbent! How about giving us GOOD reasons to vote Liberal? Reasons that would appeal to the type of voter who has given up on the Liberals as an option? Many of us voted Liberal at some time in our lives. Can you give us a reason to go back to them? I realize it's easier to just keep taking shots at the Conservatives but it might be a more positive approach.

I'm surprised to see you post this, Michael. This was Harper's stance on China, for exactly those reasons. He has faced severe criticism for thinking this way.

Hong Kong and Singapore have been manufacturing the lion's share of electronic parts like semiconductors, resistors and capacitors for some decades now. I'm not sure if China has surpassed them yet. They are strong in banking because they have so much money from local manufacturing! As for the US not getting weaker, I suppose it depends on your yardstick. Are you including unemployment? Also, shouldn't we wait a bit and see if their unemployment seems permanently high, along with a drop in living standard? As for a cite about Japan and living standards, I was rather surprised when I googled for one. I used to look this up all the time and never had a problem finding a number of sites with plainly labeled lists by country. It's been a year or two and this time it's like nobody wants to make a definite statement! Especially Wiki! Everyone has all these cautions about how you have to include quality of life and how that's dependent on subjective judgements and on and on and on... Here's one anyhow that expresses Gross Domestic Product per Capita, or how much money the average citizen of that country makes per year! We can nitpik about cost of living and such but those differences tend to be rather small when you compare them. So I would submit that this list at least gives a qualitive expression of how well a country's people are living. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gro_nat_inc_percap-gross-national-income-per-capita Japan is number 3 and Canada is number 18, which is pretty well unchanged from what I recall the past few years. Back in the late 60's and early 70's we were MUCH higher, ranking 6th or 7th if memory serves. China is 108 at the moment! It would be interesting to find its ranking from 10 years ago and follow it for the next 10. Yes, we can develop new products and technology but as I said, that only provides jobs for a few R&D people. If we send the manufacturing offshore it will put a lot of profit in the hands of the corporations but it will do little or nothing for the citizenry in general. How do we afford to buy those new products when we are lucky to have a low paying service sector McJob? Lastly, you had also asked in another post about just how significant is the cost of keeping StatsCan happy with all their forms. I have a farmer friend with a greenhouse business. They have a total staff of 6 people. His wife does the accounting and she tells me she spends about 1 day each week just on filling those forms out. Not just for StatsCan. Apparently there are many levels of government making these demands, both provincial and federal. However, just as there is only one tax payer it all represents a total of labour hours for a business. I have friends who have worked in the local steel company's human resources department and they claim these things keep at least 5 people working full time. That's a total of 5 yearly salaries that has nothing to do with the profit picture of the company. It's just buried in the cost of their steel Multiply that sort of thing by the number of businesses in Canada.

Quite right, Jerry! Resource based business is important but the problem is, it's always those countries that are strong in manufacturing that are the richest! A resource based economy is really the definition of a third world country. That's because such countries don't have the money to establish a strong manufacturing base so they try to earn foreign income by selling what resources they have. The problem is that every other third world country is trying to do the same so they all slit their own throats reducing their pricing to try to be more competitive! Look how rich Japan became, with essentially ZERO domestic natural resources! They're economy is essentially ALL manufacturing and while they've taken some hard knocks the past few years their living standard is still higher than ours! Meanwhile, we all fool ourselves by claiming that somehow we're smarter and will stay rich by doing the R&D, as if a handful of engineers dreaming up new products represents as many jobs as dozens of manufacturing plants employing hundreds if not thousands. For that matter, we should stop being so arrogant and wake up! China, India and ESPECIALLY Russia have a huge, well-educated engineering workforce! They don't NEED our R&D engineers! I'm starting to get rather frightened. All I keep hearing is the sound of academics trumpeting that our key to prosperity is to start making windmills that the Germans and Norwegians have perfected and have been exporting for at least a decade now! I guess we're just so smart that we will push these industry incumbents aside, while they will do nothing to react to attack us as a competitor in their marketplace! Actually, just the sound of ANY academics is enough to scare me! If we still have any hands-on experienced people in positions of power we never seem to hear about them anymore.

I suspect the real reason you don't hear a loud defense from the Conservatives on this board is that they don't consider it a big deal! It might be to you, or to many Canadians for that matter but I suspect that it's mostly important only to those who never liked Harper anyway. If the issue does catch on with Canadians at large then of course it will be a different story. Harper and Harper supporters will be falling all over themselves with excuses and justifications. I rather doubt it will play out that way, myself. I still think the average Canadian just doesn't care, particularly when the issue of torturing Taliban prisoners is being hyped so much as the reason proroguing happened. It's very likely that the average Canadian not only couldn't care less if it happened and was Harper's fault, he approves of it! The popular view of Taliban fighters is one of mad dog fanatics that blow up bus loads of orphans just for the sheer glee of it. The average Joe Canadian thinks they're just animals who deserve no more consideration than they give to our soldiers! Certainly, the people who gather on the overpasses of the 401 to witness our dead soldiers coming home are not too concerned if we handed over a few Taliban and they got some harsh treatment. I'm more interested in how far Ignatieff is going to run with this. If it's really this big a deal it would really make him look lame ass if he didn't try to bring the government down when Parliament finally does open. Otherwise it will be perceived as the same old "tough talk but back down when challenged" scenario that cost the Liberals so much respect over last year. Partisan supporters might accept a "suck and blow at the same time" policy but Ignatieff needs to drum up new supporters to help his party make electoral gains. As I said, I'm VERY interested in what he actually does when push comes to shove!

As I keep saying, there is precious little manufacturing done here that is NOT heavily automated! This has been the case for some years. This of course has reduced the number of available jobs. The labour left over is not a big a cost as you might think, when amortized against the high volume of goods produced for relatively few workers in a factory. No, the real significant cost disadvantages are taxes, paperwork and anti-pollution measures. Our taxes tend to be higher than countries like China. As for the paperwork, has no one ever thought about how StatsCan gets all its stats about business? Do you really think they have a huge army of bureaucrats that sit in most every business in Canada? Nope, they don't need to. Every business of more than a couple of employees has mandatory info paperwork they have to fill out, at their own expense. The bigger the employer, the more detailed the paperwork. The employers have to pay people to do collate the info and fill out the forms. It is a SIGNIFICANT cost! The cost of going green is obvious. One country's steelmakers spend millions of dollars on smokestack scrubbers. Other countries have no such costs. When it comes time to sell your steel, the dirty guy has a HUGE advantage! Like it or not, we either impose green tariffs or we lower the taxes, paperwork and loosen up on the "green" laws. There are no other solutions possible. The left in this country is either going to have to learn how to be more practical or they can kiss what's left of their worker support goodbye. Not because the workers will have had a change of political heart. There simply won't be that many workers!

Production in electronics manufacturing has been the norm since the early 80's. All the countries that are players have it at essentially the same level. When everybody has something then that removes it as a competitive advantage. I'm hearing a lot of ideas but I grew up IN that industry and nobody seems to understand the details. Either they're giving inappropriate suggestions or ones that have been tried and failed before. As for carving out a new path, I submit that the answers will have to be at the political level. The extra costs here in Canada are just too great for a company to overcome on their own. RIM has managed so far by being very efficient and having patent protections on exclusive products. They don't just sell BlackBerries. They sell the entire BlackBerry network! They got there "firstest with the mostest" but it's a scary ride on a hurtling toboggan! Patents eventually expire and you always have to keep innovating. I admire RIM for being ahead of their time but I don't believe that they could repeat their success if they started up today. One idea I've been pushing for years is a green tariff. If China can make steel with zero costs for doing it in a clean manner then there should be a tariff on Chinese steel equal to the cost that our government puts on our steelmakers in the name of keeping the environment clean. For years our politicians take the "green photo op" while they add costs to our domestic manufacturers yet pay absolutely no attention to products from foreign countries like China, Russia and India that are the heaviest polluters on the planet! Free Trade must have a level playing field. Those other countries are busy making trillions of dollars, employing millions of their citizens, belching out huge amounts of pollution into the environment while laughing at how naive and frankly stupid we are here in Canada! Green Tariffs would be a fair way to give our domestic manufacturing industry a fair chance to compete. It says something when foreign countries can essentially completely satisfy the inventory of a chain store like WalMart, even with shipping costs from halfway around the planet! I invite people to look at the labels next time they're in Crappy Tire and try to find ANY tool that's not from China! I saw in the paper there's another new solar panel maker up Kitchener way. I wonder if the WHMIS inspectors have knocked on the door yet. We'll see what that does to their pricing when they bid against China to get their products into Crappy Tire. Here in Hamilton/Niagara, the former fruit belt of Ontario, we no longer have any canneries and fruit farms are going out of business in droves. Some are hanging on by their fingertips by selling directly from roadside stands. The abandoned farms are all still there, of course. The powers that be (mostly city folk in Toronto) have passed many laws to "protect the green belt". This means that the farms can only be sold to someone else who will farm them and not for any other use. Since there is nobody who has figured out how to farm at a loss the orchards just lay there, going wild and untended. As for the farmers, I don't know what they're doing. They don't have company pensions. They expected to use the equity in their farms to provide for their retirement. I guess they have nothing! Meanwhile, I go to the supermarket and look at the labels on the cans of fruit. There's a few from the USA, a bit of Thailand and South Africa and everything else is from China! Pears, peaches, fruit cocktail, apple sauce...you name it, it's Chinese. Wonder if any of those chemicals that were in Chinese pet food that killed all those pets have found their way into those Chinese cans? Somehow, I think we need more than just more education to solve these problems!

Great! We're gonna attack this problem by growing a highly educated generation that has to try to make businesses profitable in a global economy while facing much higher taxes, labour costs and government paperwork expenses! Would you suggest making them wear shoes with 10 lb lead weights in them as well? Or would you make them globally competitive by subsidizing their tuition?

Yes, we still do lots of R & D! The problem is, R & D only provides a few jobs. When the time comes to do the volume manufacturing the business decision is always made to farm it out to another country where you can have much lower costs. During the early 90's I had left selling electronic parts to be a buyer. Later on I became a salesman again and first off started calling up all the old accounts from my list to set up appointments to see their R&D engineers. One big name I had known was so enthusiastic about seeing me I couldn't help but be suspicious. Usually a salesman has to beg a bit to get someone to take the time to see them. These guys seemed almost desperately lonely! When I got there they treated me like royalty! I got the guided tour and shook hands with all the managers. The engineers were grateful for all the data books on new products and suggestions I could offer. The clincher came when I asked who was my production buying contact. They all got very quiet and looked at the floor, scuffing their shoes. Finally, they admitted that there wasn't one. All the production had been moved to China. I was amazed! After all, the entire rationale for supporting engineering with data and samples was to be allowed to bid on the big production parts requirements! That was the revenue stream that paid for it all! Where would be the money for my company (and my commissions!) if we could never sell any parts to them? It was now obvious why they were so lonely! No distributor had called on them since the decision to move production to China had been made. Not surprisingly, the higher management fixed this problem once it became so obvious. They fired all those R&D engineers in Toronto and hired some new ones in China. So what does it benefit Canada to develop "the products of tomorrow" if it doesn't replace the lost manufacturing jobs? As for WHY we farm out the manufacturing, the answer is simple. We ARE a much more expensive country than others! Picture yourself as the head of a company who has just invented a "Mr. Fusion" generator that will let you power your car with garbage, a la "Back to the Future". You are responsible for making your company as profitable as possible. After all, your company is owned by perhaps thousands of shareholders. Not all are Conrad Blacks or Bronfmans. Most are retired folks and spinster lady teachers who have invested their life savings in buying shares. They want their return on their investment and if you don't deliver your ass is grass next board election! Canada has higher labour, taxes and mandatory government paper work than China or Ireland. Not to mention all those anti-pollution WHMIS laws! What are you going to do? If you keep it in Canada you'll only be deposed and the next CEO will send the manufacturing offshore! What's more, you know that despite patent protections and the like you'll be facing competitors with knockoffs almost right away. China has been copying software, CDs and DVDs for years with impunity. What does Canada actually do to keep the pirate stuff out? Do you really think that if you stay in Canada and pay all those higher costs you can still sell your product at a competitive price? We live in the real world and we've been doing a very poor job of realizing that! Did you think that all these Canadian CEO's give our jobs away just out of evil glee at putting their neighbours, relatives, sons and daughters out of work?

A party can offer a policy designed to recover cod fish stocks. Or they can offer higher than normal EI benefits. One is good politics. The other is just a bribe. The accepted definition of "brokerage politics" is all about offering "pork", or bribes. Like lots of jobs at dozens of canoe museums set up with federal money around Shawinigan, Quebec. This definition has been around for decades. You're entitled to yours but it wouldn't make sense to expect everyone else to go by it.

Yet for all your self-proclaimed education you thought that Senate reform was all about representation by population. Anyhow, I would submit that Senate inequities and the failure to protect regional interests is one of the direct sources of separatist thought in this country. If you read about the history of the West and the many unfair things set up to favour central Canada, or what Newfoundland actually got many times for joining confederation you can't help but wonder why they've stuck around! It's one thing for separatism to be simply an emotional feeling held by a small minority. When it is a logical reaction to a flawed system then you have an entirely different situation! Thinking that the status quo is just fine is usually a belief from someone not negatively affected by it. The state of our Senate is great for central Canada but not really for anywhere else. Nobody likes to belong to a club where your only role is just to pay dues, for eternity!

Now you're learning! I've been saying all along, we're left with who smells the least! Canada has always had what's termed "brokerage politics", which is essentially as you've described. Manning used to illustrate this with a story about a man on the corner girl watching, who had a completely different approach and value system if he was looking for a prostitute or a wife. Obviously, we tend to vote in whichever prostitute offers the best tricks. Or as Mulroney put it so eloquently years ago: "There's no whore like an old whore!" The trick is to be able to see them for what they are REGARDLESS of their party! Too many of us can't see past the jersey.

I sold electronic parts to RIM when they were still just an R&D centre at the University. I am quite familiar with that scene, along with Celestica, Nortel and many others. RIM is pretty well all that's left, now. They are an anomaly, because they were essentially the only one who made a conscious decision to base in Waterloo and stay there. All the others are pretty well gone. Electronic manufacturing is now only a shadow of its former self here in Ontario. This all came to a head around the same time the Towers fell in New York. Thousands and thousands of jobs have been lost, with nothing to replace them. All this talk of "green jobs" sounds great in academic circles but in the real world I haven't heard why any of it would make a better fit here in Ontario. All the electronic manufacturing left for countries like China and Ireland for very good business reasons. China has cheaper labour and Ireland has not just lower taxes but a LOT less government paperwork! Unless you are personally involved few citizens realize just how much of a PITA and how much money it costs to do all the paperwork our governments demand of a business. So why would any of those windmills and such be built here? Why would they be immune to the factors that have driven out other manufacturing? That leaves just service and installation. Those jobs tend to pay less. This looks like a repeat of the same old story we've been seeing as primary manufacturing has been pulling out since the 80's. No, "green jobs' is just another buzz word from people who don't actually have hands-on experience with DOING it! You talk about how we "need 10 more of them". I watched as we lost about a hundred!

Interesting. You completely ignored how the Senate works in many, many countries. You only paid lip service to the idea that we are different by mentioning the Americans. You also didn't say anything about how a two House system is supposed to ensure regional representation. In fact, you completely ignore the very idea! I wonder if you live in one of the smaller provinces. Most often, I find this view comes from people in Ontario or Quebec. Oh well, that's obviously your view and you're entitled to it. I find it rather elitist and undemocratic but that's just my opinion. And as for degrees, there are degrees and there are degrees. When I went to McMaster we all learned in the first year that with a number of left wing profs if you didn't agree with them you wouldn't pass. Hopefully your school operated at a higher standard. You have a right to be elitist and undemocratic. I won't dispute it. Perhaps if you had some better math teachers...

Alberta will always be rich! That's because Albertans have been kicked in the gut a number of times over the years and have learned how to work hard and be creative. You could have their oil run out tomorrow and it wouldn't matter. As they saw the oil output dropping off they would have invested in other things so that they could keep thriving. That's also why Ottawa will always want to take their money! Historically it was always Ontario they could use to fill their "bribe bucket", which is actually the true name for all these provincial equalization programs. Now Ontario doesn't have the money so they are REALLY gonna fleece Alberta to make up for the shortfall! Harper isn't as greedy about this as the Liberals traditionally are but the philosophy is so deeply entrenched in Ottawa that it has enough inertia to keep chugging along on its own. I agree that Ontario is the maker of its own misfortune. We Ontarioans have been watching manufacturing jobs disappear to China and the Far East since the early 80's. What the hell else was supposed to happen but the situation we find ourselves in today? The difference is, Ontarioans took their prosperity for granted and now don't know what to do with themselves. They have yet to learn that they have to make it on their own. Politicians can make all the promises they want but its just hot air. We WILL learn but it's gonna take about 20 years! In the meantime, the Feds will just keep dipping into Alberta's pocket instead.

And that's democracy! It doesn't matter if you like it or not. The people know what they want and they are going to get it. Albertans just seem to be more proactive than most other Canadians in not accepting what they are force fed. If none of the party offerings matches their wants then they form their own! As opposed to what we see with other provinces and even Ottawa, where the existing parties usually try to rig the choices so that when it really counts no one has certain options for which to vote. All the parties will be on the same side. Sadly, usually the people just go along with it. It's like the old joke about how do you get 50 Canadians out of your pool. You simply ask politely "Canadians! Would you please be so nice as to leave my pool?" They will always courteously oblige. Hell, they would obey even if it actually was THEIR pool! Maybe not if they were Albertans, however. I respect that! It is an important contribution to the character of Canada that I hope spreads eventually to the rest of the population.

Didn't you follow the math at all? It DOESN'T MATTER if you tax the rich, take everything they have or just ignore them all together! The total amount of tax money from the rich is mice nuts compared to what you get from the working man, simply because there are so many, many, many more working incomes than "rich"! SO WHAT THE HELL DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? It will NOT give any tax relief to poorer folks if you tax the rich more! You can take it ALL from them and it will only amount to a few pennies tax relief! I just don't know how to put it any plainer! If you can't grasp the concept then I guess you can only deal with emotional opinions and not facts of nature. 1 + 1 = 2! It doesn't matter how you feel about it!

You have the same tired out misconception about how the Senate is supposed to work that I've been hearing since Reform first broached the concept back in the late 80's. Listen up and once again we'll go through Civics 101. Don't they teach you anything in school anymore, BTW? This is pretty basic stuff for someone who wants to debate politics! Most parliamentary democracies, which includes of course Britain, Canada, the USA, Australia and a host of others, use a two House system of goverment. One house, as with our Commons, represents the population as a whole. This presumably would represent the will of the majority. Here is where you have your "representation by population". However, you need a check on such a house. (All government systems work with checks and balances on power, don't you know?) Issues can come up where it can be convenient for regions with more voters to have Bills passed that take advantage of smaller regions. Or a few regions can gang up on just one. This is very unfair. Examples would be some of the things done to the West over the years, such as the NEP, the Crow Rate, or the hydro-electric power scam Quebec enjoys that is a mindboggling ripoff of Newfoundland! So you have an upper House, as with our Senate. The idea of this house is "Representation by Region". Each region gets the same number of Senators. For example, in the States tiny Rhode Island gets the same number of Senators as New York or California. This ensures that while the lower House which is ruled by "rep by population" gets to initiate legislation it has to be passed by an upper House ruled by regions, which ensures that the "little regions" don't get screwed by the big ones! So nobody who actually understands what's going on is suggesting that the Senate DUPLICATE the Commons and be formed by "rep by population"! What would be the earthly point of such a thing? In Canada we have the worst of all worlds. We have a Senate that is unelected, so it's members are dependent on their parties for their existence and vote accordingly. We have a Senate that that is unequal, since smaller regions or provinces don't have equal power to the bigger ones. And last, most of the time our Senate is not very effective anyway. Lastly, our country WAS designed as a confederation of provinces, all equal in power! We are NOT a republic, like the USA! Our federal government is supposed to be supreme ONLY in certain areas, such as international defense and trade that affect the country as a whole! Where you get this idea that Ottawa is supposed to be supreme in EVERYTHING is beyond me! Even a republic like the USA still has differences between state and federal rights, some states more than others. Take a look at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for example. I don't blame you. I blame your teachers. Obviously, they suck!

How do I know the Liberal party of today is so different? Because you say so? Forgive me, but they've burned me so many times over the decades that I no longer take anything on blind faith, particularly a change for the better in the character of ANY political party! I'm willing to be shown and that will take years!

Actually, polls have consistently showed for decades now that they DON'T! Their ratings, except for a few highlights that could be kept by other networks, have always frankly sucked! Seems to me that if you were right the ratings would be high to support your premise.

Don't mention those seals! We wouldn't have a cod shortage if those damn buggers would just respect the size limits!

But if I do that, doesn't that mean I have to accept everything else the Liberals stand for? Don't I have to take the whole thing and not just this one issue? What do I do if all those other Liberal things bother me too?

Methinks it is you and those others who agree with you who are ignorant, Nicky. Or at least, mathematically challenged. If you graph out incomes to show poor, middle and high you will see the obvious. The working man represents by far all the available tax money! The poor have no money and the so-called "rich" are in such small numbers by comparison that you could take ALL of their income and it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans compared to the amount offered by all the working people. It sounds impressive to hear that a man makes a million dollars a year. For tax purposes, that could be the same as 20 working people making $50,000, which today is NOT rich! There are far more than 20 x the people making $50K or less than are making a million dollars. "Tax the rich" is just a tired old diversion that takes advantage of the fact that most of us have poor basic math skills. It's a diversion, to keep us from noticing a very sad fact of nature, that working people are taxed 'cuz that's where all the money is! As I said, the government could take ALL the income from the number of Canadians making a million or more dollars per year and it would be a pittance by comparison. No, if we want tax relief we have to pay attention to HOW tax money is spent, not how much rich or working folks pay! I wouldn't be surprised if privitization could cut tax bills in some areas in half! I've seen how the government operates, first hand! General Motors 1955 is a model of modernization and efficiency by comparison. A better question would be if some of those areas need to be done at all! Anyhow, if you don't believe me, go to StatsCan and pull the numbers yourself. 1 + 1 = 2, it's that basic.