Moonbox

While I really didn't understand half of your post, I don't think Vincente Fox has any clue what's going to happen with trade 'in the future'. Canada is and will continue to be the biggest trading partner the US has for a long time. There are about 1000 reasons for this, but I'll leave you to ponder on that.

Value is value, like I said. There's certainly perspective to it, but you can't talk about it in the sense that value = dollar value OR value = benefits it provides. Value is a measure of how much benefit you gained for the price you paid. I don't feel a GM or Chrysler provides value because I know that something like 33% of the cost of the vehicle is directly tied into paying pensions and benefits. I could probably get a similar performance vehicle from a Japanese automaker for 25% less. That's value. I'm actually quite okay with buying shirts made in China, because i know that I save more money buying these imports than I'd ever see if we had our own protected domestic shirt industry and I had to pay twice as much for the same silly shirt. That's fine but that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. I said that I think the term 'skilled labor' is over-used. Again, I don't know what you're talking about. I mentioned US auto-makers because they sold North Americans absolutely garbage vehicles for 30 years until foreigners entered the market. This is one of the best examples of why free trade is great. Now we're not getting ripped off with cars that need repairs every 6 months.

Value is value. If the government is throwing money at manufactorers that have proven they cannot compete and make products nobody wants, you're only giving them money to throw it away. It's the same as the ethanol subsidy. Sure, it keeps farmers employed, but it costs everyone else money and it provides ZERO net benefit to the economy or even really anything worthwhile to the environment. There's good stimulus and there's welfare stimulus. The term 'skilled labor' is often pretty misused. A lot of the 'skilled labor' jobs out there could be performed by monkeys out of highschool with no training. There certainly are skilled labor jobs that require extensive skills, but factory work is not necessarily skilled labor. Yeah like with American cars over the last 30 years right? North American companies are just as likely to rip us off as foreigners.

What does that have to do with anything? Dumbest point ever. He's in a position where money doesn't matter. That's like saying Dick Cheney took a pay cut when he was in the Bush administration. Duh?! Don't act like he made some huge sacrifice leaving the university. He'll still probably be earning money for published work and he only came to Canada to run for the federal leadership. If he becomes PM, which was his plan all along, his salary will likely be the same as it was at Harvard.

I've supported him thus far because the alternatives have been looking worse. My choices have been fringe party alternatives, dippers promising increased taxes and more welfare spending or Liberals promising idiocy like the Green Shift. The Liberals and NDP were promised to be a worse choice for me so like I said many times I settled on the one who'd do the least damage. Any party with Bob Rae as an important figure in it I'm going to stay miles away from.

Yeah Zimbabwe is about as useless a reference you could make. That's like comparing Canada's economy to Iceland's.

It wasn't really a blooper. The media made it into news because he very clearly got caught yelling nonsense and rhetoric. He was trying to blame the current economy on Harper but ended up looking stupid. It's parliament. It takes awhile to get things done. If every issue was a mini budget we'd not see any stimulus until 2010.

Among other things

It doesn't matter if he won a massive majority in 88 because he'd already been running massive deficits. The implosion started pretty much immediately after he was first elected.

Exactly. It's basically a tax to support parties who can't support themselves. Yes, but advertising still has an effect if it's done properly. The CPC did an amazing job smearing Dion last election. If you have enough money to spend and you send the right message, you can make just a big a difference as the media does. There are a lot of people that don't read the news, listen to the news or watch the news but still vote. When they're watching Survivor or Gossip Girls or whatever the ads will reach them at least.

That's why be had to explain himself after the fact and say something along the lines of, "I can't help it I just get really excited." right? He jumped the gun and made himself look stupid. That's fine. They all do that from time to time. This was just funny.

You're way out to lunch here. It hurts the Bloc the most, BY FAR. Because they don't fundraise, ALL of their campaign money comes from the subsidy. Without the subsidy they'd have nothing. They'd have to get off their asses and actually (gasp) fundraise. Bulls**t. For the Liberals it was 95% about the subsidy. If you don't think it was about the subsidy you're so naive about Canadian politics I don't think anything anyone says will get through to you. He's already painted himself a liar, opportunist and hypocrite. At this point nothing can affect his credibility.

I think Harper is done by now. He's become such a polarizing figure in Canadian politics and the people the CPC need to woo over will never vote for him. He personally lost Quebec last election and people just generally don't like him. At this point I really don't see what the upside is for him could be.

Won't last long. Oh well.

The only thing I'll add is that the polls are a one way battle right now. Harper has made it very clear to his party that he doesn't want to appear to be attacking anyone while working on the economy. Meanwhile the Liberals are already sounding war drums. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it but the polls are more important come election time.

The freight rate advantage only helps if we're dealing with markets very close to us. If we're competing with China for business abroad, it dissapears quickly. Another thing to note is that only certain goods enjoy freight advantages. Small and easily packaged things (computer hardware, textiles etc) are cheap to ship even halfway across the world. Canadian producers can't compete with that. I'm all for Free Trade, but only if it's also Fair Trade. Things from China need to be tariffed.

This really doesn't have much to do with what anyone is talking about. It's MARTIAL class btw.

I'll agree it was done primarily to further weaken the opposition's finances yes. As far as the budget is concerned it was pretty much a drop of water in an ocean. Even so it's difficult to justify the subsidy in the first place.

The PC's imploded everywhere, not just the west. If they hadn't done such a terrible job in the 80's and early 90's the reform probably wouldn't have even started. If the Liberals collapsed right now we'd probably also see a movement to replace them with a new party.

So....as a taxpayer I should be forced to pay for equal but more expensive goods made in Canada?

Madmax I think (he can correct me if I'm wrong) he's talking about a specific instance where we bought Canadian and it was garbage. It's true that we do business with the military, but when you're facing giant american competitors with the benefits of massive scale and their own government is the world's biggest customer, it would be a little redundant for us to have a competing and independant industry.

I'm curious as well. Care to answer the ACTUAL question?

I don't think it's a good idea. We generally export more than we import and a "Buy Canadian" clause sends the wrong message to our trading partners. I think import duties from China, Japan etc might be a really good idea but a "Buy Canadian" stimulus package is a short term solution that will make all of the infrastructure more expensive. It would ultimately cost the tax payers and only prolong long term competitive problems these unions have.

The reform party was a western protest vote that only really became a factor after the implosion of the PC's. When the PC's went from 151 seats to 2, it left quite a vaccuum in western Canada. Every party starts somewhere, which is I guess what you're saying, but I feel my vote is better spent preventing things like the Green Shift and Bob Rae by supporting the governing party which I happen to tolerate and on a lot of issues agree with. Given that national politics are all about people-pleasing in 31,000,000 directions, it's unlikely that I'll ever be totally thrilled with the governing party.

Haha. It's sadly true