Machjo

If you believe that the only thing keeping a Canadian in Canada is a hate for the US, then you've never been to Canada. Many stay because of family and friends , others for work opportunities, etc.

True, and most gas stations belong to either franchisees or large corporations directly I assume, so they can afford economies of scale. This might not apply to a small shop owner who sells smart-phone cases for example. He might not have the money to buy the machine and so must do everything by hand. It's rare, but I've come across it... though I can't remember what product or dish it was, if it was a shop or restaurant. So yes, it's rare. But even then, a person needs to buy the machine and software or program it himself, which requires knowledge of how to program it and time to do it. It probably doesn't take much time to learn and program it, but it all adds up. The reason it's rare is because it's worth the investment to automate it, something that would not be needed if no value-added tax existed at the retail level in the first place.

I'm touched.

The solution would actually have been quite simple: 1. Canada adopts unilateral global free trade and shows the US the proverbial finger. The transition to a global economy would be painful but worthwhile in my opinion. 2. Canada needs to learn to accept that we've never in our history until today ever shared a common culture Canada-wide beyond a purely legal culture. Chinuk Wawa dominated as the lingua franca in most of BC until around 1900, Nunavut has four official languages, the North-West Territories has twelve, and our MPs still communicate with one another through earphones like ambassadors at the UN General Assembly. Many people ignore just how young Canada is as a country. In practical terms, Canada is a multinational state very much like Indonesia and needs to learn to embrace that. We need to recognize that the creation of a truly national identity would require state engineering of that identity similarly to how Indonesia developed Bahasa from a trade pidgin into a full national language even with the aid of a corpus-planning committee. I doubt Canada is ready to construct a national culture yet.

I I disagree with a few of the above mentioned to varying degrees, either fundamentally or in the specifics, yet I was born and raised in Canada and even work in both official languages. I even attended Catholic separate school as a child. Can't get much more 'Canadian' than that. Ironically, my work in the language industry has actually made me even more opposed to official bilingualism than before I'd entered the workforce after I'd completed school. Romeo Saganash has slammed official bilingualism on a few occasions himself, and I remember a Catholic once speaking out against the separate school system as discriminatory. I think Canadians are changing and this is shaking the ideological foundation of 'two founding races' on which Canada was built.

And we should have just called it a revised version of NAFTA. USMCA is just too damned difficult to pronounce as a word.

I totally agree that Trump is making matters worse for his country and ours. That said, just what are these 'Canadian' values? The PQ was slammed two elections ago over its Charter of Quebec Values. The incoming Quebec government wants to keep a crucifix over the speaker's chair in the National Assembly while of course preventing public servants from expressing themselves, Ontario defends the separate school system even though it discriminates on the basis of religion and violates an international covenant to which Canada is a signatory member-state. I don't believe that Canadians have any clear agreement on what precisely our values are.

Unfortunately many of our politicians are fools. Trump is just inciting the more foolish of our politicians so he's not helping any.

Unfortunately, it appears that Canada will do it to itself judging how we're choosing to now raise fortress North America.

Tariffs are kryptonite for globalists and provincialists alike.

And protectionism can only beget more protectionism. 1920's all over again?

And businesses will pass that tax onto poor Canadian consumers. And then we wonder why the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. Worse yet, this will raise the cost of Canadian production and so make Canada less competitive on world markets. It would have been far preferable for Trudeau to negotiate a deal that would have allowed Trump to impose a reasonable tariff on Canadian steel while allowing Canada to trade freely with the world. While Canada would pay higher tariffs to export to the US, as long as the US tariffs are fair, they would just counter-balance the lower cost of Canadian products. Meanwhile, Canadian consumers would enjoy lower-cost products on our side and Canadian businesses could export more competitively to other countries.

Perhaps. I've never worked at a gas station so I wouldn't know. I have rarely but on occasion come across a small shop owner calculating the GST manually, presumably due to lack of money to automate it or maybe the machine was down that day. regardless of the reason, that imposed far more work than if the GST was just added to the business tax instead. In the airline industry, it may happen that a person must calculate multiple international taxes, airport fees, and surcharges converted from a different currency. While automation exists for most cases, there are still enough times when they all had to be calculated manually, adding to that figuring out what tax applies to what charge, etc. You may be right that a fuel surcharge at the pump is pretty straightforward, but that does not apply to all cases. For the most part, a rule of thumb would seem to suggest one large tax at the end of the year rather than billions of mini-taxes.

Just today I had an English-speaking colleague serve a Federal-Government worker. To try to reduce the language barrier, officially-unilingual English-speakers serve only English-speakers. However, she found herself needing to call a business in Quebec. The contact in Quebec did know some English but at first misunderstood some of the information which caused a delay and almost resulted in an error which could have cost us a few hundred dollars. You might say the solution is to hire more officially-bilingual staff, but we're not a dime a dozen. And even if we all knew English and French, I've sometimes found myself struggling when serving between a Government worker and a business in Austria or Brazil for example. There exist more languages in the world besides just English and French and ever more businesses need to interact internationally. On one occasion, I literally could not help the person even though that was supposed to be my job. Luckily for me, he knew Portuguese, was understanding, and offered to deal with the situation himself. Had he made a complaint, I could easily have defended myself by simply saying that I contacted the business he wanted me to contact and that my contact didn't know enough English for me to understand and I knew no Portuguese. I don't know Spanish either. Strictly speaking, according to our contract with the Government of Canada, it was our responsibility to deal with the situation even though we might have had to search for a Portuguese-speaking staff member or figure out another solution. Again, luckily for us, he just took it upon himself. Also, that we need to hire more English-French-speaking staff actually reduces the linguistic diversity among us which makes it harder for us to find staff who may know other languages. Just think DFATD, DND, the RCMP, and many other departments interact internationally in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. The Government of Canada does not function just within Canada's own borders. You'd be surprised at just how many Federal Government workers are working outside of Canada at any given time and how much Ontario and Quebec need to interact with one another and even BC and Quebec. As far as official bilingualism goes, one could say that I'm working in the belly of the dragon. I'm immersed in it each day and so can tell you all kinds of stories because I live it. For most people, official bilingualism is just something you show off when ordering a meal at a restaurant and then listen to through earphones in Parliament, not something you use for any more complex interaction than that.

I buy fuel. That's a non-renewable resource and so I think it should be taxed. That said, I also think we should tax it efficiently. For example, imposing a tax on the net profits of a resource-extraction business allows it at the end of the year to write one big check to the state after having calculated its total net profits for the year. Compare that to each gas station needing to invest in programming their systems to calculate this tax and that tax with each transaction often collecting no more than a few dollars. Sometimes governments overlook inefficiencies even in the tax-collection process itself.

My problem is less with supply management than with subsidies. With animal husbandry raising the cholesterol we consume, it does make sense for at least an animal-husbandry business to pay a tax on its net profits. That said, yes, I would prefer supply-management and even tariffs over government subsidies to it. While this might increase the cost of milk, animal products and byproducts are not a required part of a healthy diet anyway and not essential.

Like that the lack of a common language costs taxpayers around 2.4 billion dollars a year according to the Fraser Institute and that it probably accounts for the single greatest trade barrier between Ontario and Quebec and that official bilingualism can prevent many indigenous and other Canadians from accessing much employment in the Government of Canada and that it contributes to high rates of functional illiteracy due to both languages being among the more difficult ones to learn which imposes a further drain on our economic resources?

I know both official languages fluently, so yes, they form parts of my culture. Official bilingualism with MPs sticking earphones into their ears like UN ambassadors has nothing to do with culture. That's just expensive bureaucracy. I'd rather our MPs lead by example by actually sharing a common language among themselves rather than act like UN ambassadors in Parliament.

It's not just packaging and labeling and it's not just immigrants and foreigners. Statistically around half of working-age Canadians is functionally literate in neither official language. For indigenous Canadians, it increases to around 60%. So again, we're not talking about immigrants here but rather internal trade itself. That's why I'd given the example of trade even between Quebec and Ontario, two provinces within Canada. Small businesses can't always afford translation and interpretation. Heck, even Parliament needs to recess for the day when their interpretation system breaks down. Why expect a higher standard for our small entrepreneurs than we do for our lawmakers? Also, the EU is a bad example. Whereas Canada is based on the personality principle, Belgium and Switzerland are based on the territoriality principle. In other words, individual regions within their states are officially unilingual with only the legislature that's really officially bilingual. In other words, they expect the individual and not the state to be bilingual. We can look at Indonesia and Tanzania too. They're both bursting with languages but at the national level have but one official language, Indonesian and Swahili respectively, even though few actually speak them as a first language. They chose these languages for their comparative ease of learning, not because many citizens speak them as first languages. Canada in many ways is like Indonesia with its multiple languages. Even Nunavut alone has four official languages and the NWT has twelve regional official languages too.

I'm not denying that English and French Canadians may need to communicate with one another. But to learn a smattering of English or French brings no benefit whether cultural or economic. It would make more sense to allow those with the right aptitude to specialize in English and French translation and let others specialize in other fields even in high school. Those who do not wish to specialize in a second language but would still like to know a second language should be free to learn an easier language as an alternative. Given the dismal success rate in French and English as second languages in both Ontario and Quebec, I could even see Ontario and Quebec agreeing to letting interested students learn Esperanto as a second language. Since it's an easy language, even Esperanto as a core language course would suffice so no need for intensive or immersion courses. Due to a coordinated effort between two provinces, Quebecers and Ontarians could communicate with one another through Esperanto after a generation while the few bilingual English and French resources could shift aware from small business to other areas where their expertise is more needed so as to eliminate excessive market demand for that skill.

I wasn't talking about immigrants. I was referring to people with very Canadian accents in either language and probably born in Canada. If Canada is to compete with the world, our education must become more practical. Either success rates in second language learning improve, we teach an easier second language, or we stop making second-language learning a compulsory subject and have students focus on other skills. Another option would be for those who choose to learn a more difficult second language like English or French to make it a specialization to ensure that they graduate fluently bilingually.

If they're so much a part of the Canadian identity, why do they need official recognition? I remember visiting Ottawa for the first time as an adult. I was seeking directions in Orleans (a supposedly more French-speaking part). For some reason, I addresses a couple in French. They apologized in English saying they didn't know French. It took me no more than a day to realize Ottawa was English. When I went to Gatineau, I noticed that people in Hull all seemed to know English to varying degrees, usually quite well. I soon learnt that that wasn't the case everywhere in Gatineau as I went deeper into the suburbs of Gatineau where most definitely didn't know English. This is all in the National Capital Region itself, right on the border between Quebec and Ontario. If most Ottawans don't know French and most Gatinois (at least outside of Hull and areas near it) don't know English, then I can't imagine that official bilingualism is as widespread as people think beyond the most rudimentary language skills for introductions and basic negotiation of prices in commerce. Even in Hull, some knew only what I'd call 'commercial English', meaning the ability to discuss prices and a little more surrounding their field of work and not much more beyond that.

We can compete even when wages are dissimilar. Even in the present NAFTA, many manufacturers moved to Mexico only to regret it later since while the workers were willing to accept lower wages, they didn't always have the skills the company needed, forcing the company to then spend much money on training. Some businesses even remained in the US or Canada to avoid this problem. The same applies in world trade. i absolutely agree that in a state of unilateral free trade, Canada would absolutely need to invest heavily in universal compulsory public education and trades and professional education for its unemployed. Also, it would need to take a more no-frills-no-gimmicks approach to policy. No more official bilingualism from coast to coast to coast. We might allow unilingual English packaging and labeling in BC and French in Quebec to reduce the cost of translation for example. We might scrap Canadian-content laws. While education would still need a civic-education component, it would need to become more streamlined. Unless second-language education can achieve more than a 10% success rate as is presently the case in New Brunswick schools, we may need to make it an optional subject (or let students choose easier languages like Esperanto, Indonesian, Swahili, etc. to increase success rates). We may need to focus on more practical education. For example, environmental policy might involve teaching vegan cookery in school so that students know how to cook healthier dishes to reduce health care costs and improve the environment through dietary influence. We may need to focus more on ensuring that every child graduates with a trade or profession. In short, education would need to become highly public-policy-driven. Since the state could not afford to help the poor as much, it would become important to help the poor help themselves. This could mean allowing for more high-density mixed development with more walking and cycling paths. This is not to say that the rich have no obligation towards the poor, but merely saying that we cannot help the poor through monetary solutions alone. They need to be combined with strategies that would allow the poor to live at lower cost without the need for subsidies. Again, I'm not saying scrap social assistance, but I am saying a much more no-frills-no-gimmicks-hands-up type of assistance.

As I mentioned above, we can't assume that the US would necessarily be the intended market. For example, a business that wants to avoid tariffs on its exports would rather move to the US and just focus on selling to the US market. A business that wants to focus on keeping its production costs down would rather set up shop in Canada and focus on the Canadian market. The US business might have to sell at a higher price to cover its higher overhead costs but would be protected by tariffs against Canadian competition. The Canadian business could undersell the US product in Canada. So each would just focus on its own market. Where I could see a problem has to do with economies of scale and high transportation costs. Businesses that are particularly affected by that would naturally prefer to move to the US and just accept the higher costs of production. Businesses that are less affected by these factors and would benefit more from lower costs of production would rather just move to Canada and focus on the Canadian and other 'free-market countries.'

It lowers the cost of production. How's that not an advantage?