Moonbox

They're layoffs man. This isn't uncharted territory. Previous governments have initiated large cutbacks in the past and the country didn't blow up. Regardless, the point remains that we can only argue whether or not cut backs are a needed/desirable. Bringing up the possibility that the cut backs will be implemented poorly is a silly argument to use against the proposal in general. I can just as easily suggest that the implemenation will be fantastic and we'll have a wholly positive outcome. I'm not trying to be rude, but it IS a pointless argument to make. The government spent $20M to have Deloitte, a company with some of the most knowledgeable and professional accountanting consultants in the world analyze operations from Sept 2011 to the end of March to find cost savings. The fact that the government sought expert guidance, that far in advance, suggests that they were trying to make the process as planned out and deliberate as possible. Respectfully, I have far more faith in Deloitte's consultants and their professionalism than I do in your vague misgivings and mistrust of the government. What certainty? I know as little about how the cuts will affect us as you do. All I know is that the government is making long overdue public sector cuts and I'm happy about this. If they botch it, we'll know in a few years and we can vote accordingly. Given that they spent $20M to find the proper cost savings, however, I'm very hopeful that this will do more fiscal good than bad. My glass is half full. Your glass is half-empty. Neither stance is more curious than the other.

I'm not sure what your point is here. You can raise this objection/question on literally ANYTHING the government does, so it's pretty much meaningless. In the end, we have to assume that the millions the gov't spent to have third party consultants and accountants find cost savings will lead to positive budget outcomes. Layoffs are generally done en masse for a reason. It's so they can be over and done with in as short a period as possible, so that the people still working there can move on with their lives/jobs and not be worried about a slow bleed of pink slips. As for coincidence, there is none. The Conservatives have long indicated that we have a bloated public service, everyone knew that, they won a majority and now they're moving forward with their plans. Minimum wage and labour laws should be all the protection Wal-Mart employees should expect. I want to try not to sound like a dick, but what sort of qualifications are required for a Wal-Mart job really? The only reason you would unionize as a Wal-Mart employee is because it's a profitable company and because it's huge. Employees could, again, hold them hostage for wages and benefits they couldn't hope to find working in similar roles. We're not increasing the power of the private sector by laying off redundant public sector employees. We're making the private sector more competitive by eliminating inefficiencies and tax liabilities. I really think that you're looking at this too much in a socialist vs capitalist mind set. Too much of one or the other is always bad. Right now, our public sector is bloated and making life more expensive than it should be for the average Canadian. At the same time, however, there's an increasing polarization of wealth in Canada that's making it more difficult than ever for the middle class. These are SEPERATE and UNRELATED problems that should be each dealt with on their own.

Yes, but like I said, it's politics. There are optics to concern yourself with, particularly the running of a minority government during a recession. Cutting public sector jobs would have looked bad at that time, and would have probably helped the opposition, regardless of its merits. What's your point though? It's being done now and the opposition is protesting. If you're just trying to score points against the current government, then sure, you have scored a point. If you want to argue the merits of proposed and ongoing cuts, however, this has little relevance. Better than public-sector unions?? Absolutely! A unionized public-sector monopoly, particularly in an essential service, is an abomination. Healthcare, teaching, waste-collection, postal service etc are all things that we pretty much cannot do without. When those workers go on strike, they basically hold taxpayers hostage for higher wages and benefits which those taxpayers themselves have no chance of getting. As for the 'greedy corporations' that screw everyone over, that is, perhaps, something the government could take more of a roll in. Higher minimum wages, import tarrifs, more aggressive anti-combine laws etc can all do more to make the labour markets more competitive.

First, you have to understand that everything works at the government level at a snail's pace. Even with the government limiting debate in the House it's a huge, complex beast and is going to take way more time than most people wouldn't like. That's irrelevant to the discussion. If you're interested in having an honest, non-partisan debate, you can't argue against the government's initiative in the first place and then also complain that they didn't do it sooner. Sure! I'll not argue that at all. We are talking about politics, however, and it's a science of comparison. The government is held accountable at election time, and in the absence of a reasonable and superior alternative, it's going to get re-elected. The NDP was certainly not offering these cuts in their platform, so what are we going to do? Are we going to hold the present government accountable for NOT cutting spending earlier by electing a government that declared itself against these cuts??? We'd have to assume that the expensive consultants the government has hired over the last few years would be the ones finding inefficiencies and redundancies. It's more or less worthless for you and I to speculate, because there's no way for us to know. Like any organization, public or private, the cuts aren't likely to be made blind. Most managers would hopefully know enough about their operations to see what they can get by without and what isn't necessary. Again, however, it serves no purpose for you and I to speculate whether or not the cuts will all be done right. Indeed, probably not all of them will be. Cutting costs in general, however, is probably a good idea at this point. The private sector, however, usually doesn't leave the taxpayer holding the bag. The inefficiencies there are, at least to some extend, sorted out by competition. Over-staffed, unproductive units eventually get shut/trimmed down by virtue of the market. It's not perfect, no, as we've seen with the Big Three automakers and the Telecom industry, but it's better than having to deal with the Public Sector Unions.

It's not quite zero-sum, no, but the 'intangibles' that you and jacee etc would ask us to consider don't even come close to bridging the gap. This is not to say that we don't need a public sector, but the fact that it's already bloated and that it generally pays far better wages (for similar or even worse qualifications) means that would certainly be better off trimming the fat.

No disrespect intended really, but clearly none of you guys have studied any economics. The fact that you're asserting that more government jobs = more taxes and therefore a stronger economy is pretty indicative of this. The exact opposite is true, in fact. The taxes public sector workers pay NEVER EVER equals what they earn in salaries. If the math escapes you, picture an economy where EVERYONE in Canada worked for some public service. The tax rate would be 100% and the government would still go bankrupt. I mean...this is just funny: Wow. Let's pretend we have an income of $60k. 67% of 60k = 40k So we have savings per year of 20k As for tax revenues lost, you'd see around 6k less tax revenue from this person per year total. So we're looking at 14k of savings now. Lastly, we have consumption taxes that we're missing out on, so let's pretend HST all goes to the federal government at 13% of consumption AND let's assume that the 20k in lost salary would have ALL been spent. 20k x 13% = 2600 in revenue. 14k-2.6k = 11,400 in annual savings for the government in the FIRST year, disregarding the fact that EI is temporary and that the former employee will have to find a (hopefully) private sector job which will provide net benefit to the economy or end up on welfare, where he/she will be MUCH less of a drag on the economy than they previously were.

I think this is a case of Topaz complaining about something the government has done simply because it's Harper and the Tories, and not the Liberals. As for how this would cost us nothing, that's pure fantasy. To provide relief money to the IMF, we would have to borrow it, which costs us money. The IMF would of course promise to pay us back, but that's on the assumption that the countries that borrow pay THEM back... The goal here, of course, is to have well-managed economies use their good credit ratings to secure low rate financing for badly managed economies. It's sort of like good debt chasing bad. If Europe is willing to take the steps necessary to reduce their deficits and spending, the crisis can be contained by Europe alone. If not, then I see no reason why economies who have, at best, minimal interest or trade with the problem economies should get involved.

I didn't mean to be insulting, but blaming globalization for the decline of the North American auto industry is both naive and dense. By far the major cause of this was poor value. North American auto makers have lost share over the last 20 years to German and Japanese auto makers, and more recently South Koreans. These countries are hardly 3rd world slave markets, particularly not Germany. Why is it that they succeed where our domestic producers fail? Because they didn't build shit cars for us or get locked into absolutely ridiculous union contracts that paid FAR beyond fair market value for their work. That's what the Big Three did, and it snowballed from there as the union contracts became more and more lavish. The more benefits that needed to be paid, the more the auto makers had to increase their margins and/or decrease quality. My acknowledgement for the downsides of globalization was much more general and not really directed to the auto sector at all. There are certainly downsides, particularly involving the polarization of wealth in Canada, but as far as the auto-industry goes, Canadians are much better served being able to buy affordable, reliable cars today than they were buying gas-guzzling garbage that broke down every couple of years just so that auto-workers with minimal education could live well above the means of their average customers.

Clearly he doesn't know, else he wouldn't have responded that way. Are you, however, in any way surprised? I'm not.

It's naive and a bit dense to blame globalization for the problem. If anything, it's improved things for the average driver in North America. Prior to the more globalized economy, the cars made here were total shit. They were expensive, guzzled gas, broke down all the time and didn't last. Consumers were getting absolutely ripped off by the car companies, and the unions benefitted from this tremendously. Toyota and Honda turned the industry upside-down by building quality cars and, as we saw, drove the Big Three to their knees. Now we get far more value for what we're buying and we actually have a choice. Oh the inhumanity... Having said that, I do believe that Globalization may be going a bit too far. In North America, we've seen cheaper goods overall, but stagnant wages and the dwindling of our manufacturing sector. I wouldn't at all be averse to adding tarrifs to manufacturers from overseas in places like India and China, where dirt poor wages are their only competitive advantage. Having said that, I'd only be supportive of this if I knew the unions were out of the picture and we weren't going to get swindled like we did all the way up to the late 80's and early 90's.

I'm all about the de-criminalizing prostitution. That's all fine and dandy. In my mind, there's nothing criminal about it at all and its prohibition is a relic of old puritanical days and, as you and others have mentioned, it forces women underground and into danger. Having said that, I still think it's a good idea to deny visas for strippers from overseas. It's not a 'right' for foreign women to be able to come to Canada for work, and the nature of this work, their lack of support from any family or friends, and their likely weak grasp of english puts them in EXTREMELY vulnerable positions where exploitation is far too easy to accomplish. Right now, a criminal exploiter can bring a women in from overseas, isolate her and pimp her out from a strip joint. On the strip joints' side, everything looks legit. The woman is allowed in Canada and she has valid work, and if she does anything illegal the owner can just say he didn't condone it blah blah blah. By denying visas in the first place, the criminals have to smuggle women into the country in the first place (placing them at risk of arrest), they have to employ them illegally (placing them at risk of arrest for employing illegal immigrants) and their supply of naive women coming to Canada voluntarily for a better life dwindles considerably. We do go after the criminals, but under the current formula, it's far too easy for them to pretend what they're doing is legitimate, as I've explained above. We're not 'going after' the women either. They have no 'right' to come to Canada in the first place, and we're not harming them or imprisoning them or anything like that. The premise that we're somehow hurting them is just stupid. By that logic, we're going after everyone who we deny entry into Canada.

You do? Let's go back to the following: All that matters is what makes sense to you...right. I'm starting to get a picture of how your brain works now...or doesn't. This sort of comment is strikingly similar to, "The aliens are real in my brain." You're outdoing even yourself! Common sense doesn't exist! WOW! I think I need to put that in my signature! Look up the definition of common sense and get back to us please. Holy mother...

I'm going to place this thread under the category "Yawn".

It's not hard to win an argument against you, especially with dumb responses like this. Add something reasonable to the discussion or stop posting. Posts like the above are good examples of trolling.

What are you even talking about??? First of all, if you had an ounce of reason you'd know that nobody here can provide proof from our computers that it either is or isn't happening, nor would the effort of doing so be worthwhile to satisfy the brainless arguments of an irrational forum poster like yourself. We're arguing the pros and cons of the proposal, and as of yet I have really heard of any good cons. The argument that denying them work visas, thus forcing themselves to enter as illegal aliens, therefore putting them in even more danger, is ludicrous. Someone has to come up with something better than that.

The most common reasons for needing to launder money are prostitution and drugs. Except sexual exploitation is not really a petty crime at all. In a lot of cases it's more like slavery. It doesn't seem like you were really get at anything with this point, however. Now you're just nattering for the sake of it. I'll agree with that. It's unfortunate being on the same side of an argument as CPCFTW. He tends to dumb things down pretty hard.

How many more dumb things are you going to say? Strip clubs are just money laundering fronts? The fact that money needs to be laundered in the first place is indicative that there are illegal activities going on in the background. Criminal organizations generally don't restrict themselves to one type of activity. Often they're amalgamations of all sorts of different enterprises. Drugs and prostitution are two of the most common. Don't be daft. Not allowing highly likely future victims to make themselves vulnerable in Canada IS protecting victims. The whole point of the law is to prevent them from landing in a bad situation. You clowns have taken the extraordinary position that not allowing them easy entry into the country somehow MAKES them into victims, which is ridiculous. If we're preventing women (currently not being exploited) from putting themselves in positions where they're very likely to be exploited, that's not victimizing them. If we're forcing criminal organizations to smuggle women into the country for the purpose of exploiting them, we're not making the situation worse than it already was.

You win for the dumbest post in the thread so far. Frankly, your logic sucks. Sure, some women will be smuggled into the country. That's a matter for the Coast Guard, Customs, Immigration etc to sort out. That doesn't mean, however, that it won't seriously curtail the operations of criminal exploiters. If they have to pay to smuggle women into the country, it'll cost them a ton of money to do it, put them at risk and make it very hard for them to pretend they're running legitimate and legal business. It'll make it much easier to prosecute the EMPLOYERS as a result. The argument that we shouldn't de-legitimize something simply because criminals will break the law and get around it is beyond stupid.

Did I say anything about banning strip clubs? That's not my suggestion at all. My suggestion is not to grant them to young women working as strippers. The basis for this suggestion is that the women put themselves in very vulnerable positions and the likelihood of them being criminally exploited is high. I only mentioned the term 'essential service' ironically, but it's interesting that this is what you latched on to out of my whole argument. I'm looking for a good explanation on how this in ANY way makes Canadians worse off, because realistically, your critism seems based more on being an anti-Harper hack rather than any review of the proposal's merits.

Actually it looks like he's arguing with a bunch of children. You guys haven't really made an intelligent point in 4 pages. The argument is really simple. The likelihood of trouble for a young foreign woman who comes to Canada specifically for the purpose of stripping is exponentially higher than for the born-and-raised Canadian woman. Stripping is far from an essential service and the Canadian economy isn't exactly going to grind to a halt if our strip joints aren't full of 18 year old Russians. By not granting work visas to strippers, the government eliminates a very obvious, visible and vulnerable supply of young women for criminals to exploit. Since Canada is neither morally nor legally obligated to grant work visas to these people, and since it wouldn't hurt our economy in the slightest, it's difficult to see how this is bad for Canada. I mean, you guys are ACTUALLY making the argument that preventing young, naive, likely poor and uneducated foreign women from putting themselves in EXTREMELY vulnerable positions is HARMING/VICTIMIZING them!?!? Holy crap...

Aspersions...nice! Use the thesaurus for that? Sure, but the thread is about not allowing work visas to strippers and the rationale behind it, and cybercoma for some reason brought up that Canadian and American girls get exploited too, implying that this was just a misguided puritanical crusade against stripping. Young foreign women coming alone to Canada to work as strippers are putting themselves in positions of risk where the likelihood of exploitation is amplified probably 1000 fold. Maybe you could just say, "Sorry for trying to sound smarter than I am and for trolling you with lame gotcha statements." Try to contribute to the discussion instead of just being a glib little weenie okay?

No. They're really, really not. A testimonial. Well that's reliable. Interesting that you know so many women in the business...I myself know 'none'. Regardless, if you can't see how easily an Eastern European girl with weak English language skills and no friend or family support could get exploited, I don't know what to say to you. Yes, there are exploited Canadian girls as well. A lot of them are coming from dirt poor, abusive or neglective families, however, and it's a lot harder for the government to anticipate who and where these girls are, and therefore much harder to do anything about. When an 18-25 year old girl from Russia comes here alone, however, and it's pretty clear she'll be stripping, it's much easier to see where things are going. Your assertion that the government is targetting victims is just really stupid. The government is looking to prevent scenarios with high likelihoods of unfortunate outcomes. Personally I don't really see the value in granting work visas for strippers in the first place. Why are you upset that poor girls from out of country aren't going to be able to come here and take their clothes off for dirt bags and old married men?

You do sound like you've been listening to your toaster. If you're serious, and you actually think that this is possible right now...I'm sorry I don't even have a good suggestion for you...just good luck

I'd say that the safety records of pipelines are pretty good and that the alternative is to not drill the oil at all, or transport it by truck. I don't like the alternatives. As far as the environmentalists are concerned, the oil sands shouldn't exist at all. In terms of pipeline location, the goal for them, it seems, is to delay the process as long as possible and hope that eventually people give up altogether. If the goal was to actually find the most practical (both environmentally and economically), then perhaps people would take their concerns more seriously.

I think it's just indignation that the gravy train, which a lot of people have been willfully abusing, is being reigned in a TINY bit.