Machjo

I trace my roots back to New France, yet I doubt that I meet Argus' standard of what it means to be a 'Canadian.'

And what is Canadian? I work in English and French, speak mostly Chinese in the home and at the local shops, address my parents and extended family in either English or French and my wife's in Mandarin, read litererature in equal proportions in English, French, and Esperanto and to a lesser extent in Chinese Pinyin (children's literature), watch films in English and Chinese equally, and listen to songs in English and Chinese equally and sometimes in Esperanto and more rarely French. Yet I trace my roots back to New France on one parent's side and the UK on the other's. Religiously, there are at least three religions that different members of my family profess. As for food, I was raised on hunting and typical English and French Canadian fare, later learnt to cook Indian vegan, and then learnt to cook Chinese vegan and now eat mostly Chinese. So, what is a Canadian?

How else are they to reproduce?

I suppose an alternative to assimilation is integration. Though around 40% of Indonesians speak Javanese and an absolute maximum of 30% (some suspect maybe around 10%) speak Indonesian as a first language, Indonesia chose Indonesian as the official language just because it was easier to learn and already widespread as a lingua franca that around 99% of Indonesians know to varying degrees. Neither English nor French are particularly easy to learn and so they probably pose the main barrier to integration, whether of indigenous Canadians, foreign born, and even Canadians moving to and from Quebec.

How do we force assimilation? Well, let's take examples from history. 1. Favour British immigration. 2. Hand out smallpox-infected blankets. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics#Frequency_and_efficacy_of_biological_weapon_usage) 3. Force the natives into residential schools. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system). Favouring British immigration and establishing the Indian Residential School system helped English overtake Chinuk Jargon as the dominant language in BC betwee 1898 and 1900. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_Jargon#Overview_and_history) Of course to ensure that English continued on track, the Government had to stay firm even once English gained the upper hand: Duncan Campbell Scott in 1910 described the goal of the Department of Indian Affairs in dealing with the Indian Problem. Then we had the pesky Chinese, but the Chinese Exclusion Act helped to bring that problem under control. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Canadians#20th_century) Then we had those pesky Germans, but we got that problem under control after 1917. (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/german-canadians) In the 1960's, Commissioner J. B. Rudnyckyj wrote a separate statement challenging his colleagues’ proposals for an exclusively Anglo-French language policy at the B&B Commission. He actually believed that because Ukrainian Canadians had cleared the Prairies, they should count among the 'founding races.' But Laurendeau and Dunton would have none of that. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_bilingualism_in_Canada#The_perception_of_official_bilingualism_as_an_exclusively_bi-ethnocentric_policy) Canada's mistake was in believing that it needed draconian measures only to build the country, not to maintain it. Wrong. If the country is built on draconian measures, it must be maintained through draconian measures too. For example, ever since the end of the residential-school era, some indigenous languages are making a comeback in spite of laws favouring English and French. Ukrainian and German Canadians have rebuilt their languages in the Prairies and parts of the Waterloo region. People are changing religions (used to be stricter laws against that in the past). People intermarry, learn foreign languages, raise their children in those languages, etc. You see. If you want to force assimilation, you'll need some pretty draconian measures to do so. Even closing our borders will not prevent conversion to minority religions or people learning unofficial languages and using them and intermarrying, etc. You'll need some pretty tough measures to stop all of that.

Buying sex is illegal.

Money laundering is a somewhat unique crime in that it generally stems from other crimes. The whole point of it is to hide the source of dirty money. So reduce overall crime rates, and money laundering will decline along with it. Much of that money comes from loansharking, prostitution, and the drug trade; so shut those down to a reasonable degree, and much money laundering will disappear along with it since then there'd be less money to launder in the first place. So introduce effective self exclusion from casinos, and loansharks would lose much money there. Keep criminalizing buying sex, and that cuts off much money there. Now we just need to tighten our grip on narcotics trafficking. As for porn, there is ever more research showing its harms on society.

It's not only liberals. Even conservatives fear any kind of regulation because it's 'tyranny'. Heck, even some Conservaties would like ot decriminalize prostitution. Some would find it insane to adobt the British online-porn policy requiring a person to opt in with proof of ID as if that would somehow be censorship. The idea of needing to scan ID and fingerprint to enter a casino is treated as fascist as if we have a fundamental right to enter a casino. And the idea of forcing a person to register a SIM card? Oh my! Seriously, we've gone insanely libertarian as a country.

It comes with the territory. Let's take Singapore as an example. Singapore has a more effective self-exclusion program from casinos than Canada does, so that helps to curb money-laundering through gambling. Singapore requires SIMs to be registered, so it makes it harder to engage in drug trafficking and human trafficking, etc. Singapore knows how to deal with drug traffickers. 'Nuff said on that point. Money laundering is an interesting crime in that pretty much by definition, it stems from another crime which then requires the money to be white-washed into legality. If we can tackle other crimes, then money laundering will dovetail with that. If we want lax laws, that's what we get. We made our bed so we can sleep in it. Maybe the only area where we do slightly better than Singapore is in prostitution. Under the Swedish model, we can greatly diminish rates of prostitution, another major source of tax evasion, and human trafficking, another major source of money laundering.

I don't think we need to limit ourselves to the far left and the far right. I'll claim a good idea from whatever source it comes from. I'm not shy about appropriation.

I don't see this as a right or left matter. Heck, even Andrew Scheer drank the milk of the Canadian dairy lobby.

In hindsight, maybe an all-out trade war would be a good thing for Canada. If Canada hurts enough, it might then finally start listeing to its economists in desperation to go unilateral.

From that perspective, in a strange way, I'd almost wish for an all-out trade war between the US and Canada. Unfortunately, I'm not sure most Canadian politicians would catch on. They might lower tariffs against other states but would foolishly raise them against the US. They just can't ignore the US and forcus on what's best for us.

Canada should focus on what is within its control. Does free trade with the US benefit Canada? Sure it does, the biggest advantage being in transportation costs compared to countries farther afield. However, Canada can trade with the US only to the degree that both sides are willing to trade with one another, and Canadian tariffs are hurting our consumers more than they are anyone else. With that, Canada should just forget about the US and adopt unilateral global free trade. The US would reciprocate to its benefit or not to its detriment. Not our business. Let the US do what it wants and we'll do what's best for us. If you believe that the US is a sovereign state, then you accept that whether to its benefit or to its own harm, the US has the sovereign freedom to choose with whom it will trade just as Canada does. If the US chooses to not trade with Canada, or to trade less with Canada than Canada would like, while that certainly does hurt Canada, there is no point in Canada hurting itself even more by masochistically raising our own taxes against the US. Let the US do its thing and let Canada adopt unilateral global free trade. Also, let's be consistent in our arguments. Canada chose to protect its agricultural industry (to its own harm, sure, but according to its own sovereign choosing) and Trump decided to try to strongarm Canada to back down on that. That angers me for two reasons. Firstly, Trump imposed economic harm on the US itself by raising tariffs against Canada, which just shows how foolish he is (no brighter than our own politicians). Secondly, he tried to usurp Canadian sovereignty through such strongarm tactics. Unfortunately though, Canada is now behaving in the same way through its own strongarm tactics to usurp US sovereignty and to our own harm (and even worse given our comparative economies of scale). In short, we have a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

They're fools. US tariffs hurt US consumers more than they do anyone else and Canadian tariffs hurt Canadian consumers more than they do anyone else. If Trudeau and Freeland had the slightest inkling of economics 101, they'd just unilaterally drop all tariffs and let the US do what it wants.

Shooting themselves in the foot. And we foolishly retaliate in kind by shooting ourselves in the foot too. The essence of a trade war.

Trump was reacting foolishly to Canada's own protectionism. Canada was shooting itself in the foot, Trump felt jealous, and so he decided to shoot the US in the foot in retaliation. Canada, foolish as it is, decided to shoot itself in the foot even more in retaliation for that. That's the essense of a trade war.

Government borrowing to pay those subsidies rais interest rates which affect all US residents including low-income ones. The best solution for Canada would be for Canada to just open its borders to US products that meet Canadian food standards, not subsidize our own industry, let US taxpayer (or lenders) subsidize my food purchases, and let the Canadian industry die off and its workers adapt to new industries. Economics aside though, I recognize that farmers are an extremely powerful lobby group in Canada that would never allow such common sense to prevail.

In one respect, the Canadian system is better than the US one in that at least it's more user-pay. For example, as a non-consumer of eggs and dairy, I don't contribute to that industry. If I were in the US, I would have no choice but to contribute through my taxes. On the one hand, I'd say if the US is stupid enough to have US taxpayers subsidize my food consumption, who am I to complain about that? Even economists would agree that the US consumer would be helping to enrich Canadians by subsidizing our food. On the other hand, I understand the political optics behind it. One solution could be to allow US food products to be sold tariff-free only to businesses that sell only to recipients of social assistance in Canada. This would mean for example that I would not be allowed to buy from that shop. A social-assistance recipient could be provided with a government card authorizing him to buy from that shop.

That depends. I was thinking maybe a personal wealth tax of 20% (meaning that essential and business assets would not count in that). In exchange, eliminate income taxes, value-added taxes, carbon taxes (since rualties essentially serve that purpose anyway), tariffs, and maybe other taxes too. Overall, that would amount to a significant overall tax reduction. Of course only once our debt is paid off first, but then yes, let's start really dropping our overall taxes.

And tariffs are among the worst taxes around. Yes, the government needs a sourse of revenue. Three general sources include taxes, royalties on resource extraction, and fines. I like royalites since they're user-pay. Just raise those. I like fines since they charge the people who deserve to pay. Raise those. As for taxes, they need to be rational. I could see a moderate wealth tax for example. But as for tariffs, they actually hinder economies of scale and efficiency (for example, it would be better for an Ontario plant to sell to New York and its Washington plant to sell to Vancouver from the standpoint of transport costs. Tariffs distort these.

I don't care too much about that. Sure US free trade with Canada would benefit Canada too just as it would the US; but since Canada has no control over that, I don't worry about it. I say just unilaterally drop tariffs and quotas against the world and let the chips fall where they may. Growing pains, sure, but it would make us economically more resilient in the end.

Since Australia and New Zealand have relative open borders between one another, you're right that that allows each to work in the others' country visa-free. But if they ever ended that agreement, then the different in passports would be wide. Ensuring a common citizenship and passport would make it more difficult to remove Canadians' freedom to move around Canada. Semi-sovereign states but with a common citizenship and passport.

Interesting perspective, and not far from the truth. I still see the benefit of a common citizenship and passport though from the standpoint of labour mobility. Beyond that, perhaps we should transfer all other powers to the provinces. This would make them almost sovereign states in their own right minus responsibility for citizenship and passports going to the federal government. But then with the federal government holding so little responsibility, we could probably reduce the Federal parliament to nine MPs elected by the members of the provincial parliaments, good enough. Heck, it's not like the feds would need to manage a heck of a lot then. It would literally hace one ministry: Citizenship and passports.

I favour free trade, so you won't here a complaint from me there. In principle, confederation might be more worthwhile if it could maintain free trade within our borders. Otherwise, from an economic standpoint, what's the point? Maybe each province could become a loose federation that would share a common citizenship and passport and nothing else. I'd be happy with that, honestly.