Machjo

Firstly, we need to make a distinction between the official and unofficial spheres. Officially, Christmas is still a statutory holiday. Unofficially, it's up to each business and individual to decide for itself. In my opinion, that Christmas applies as a statutory holiday outside of government offices to public schools and businesses already crosses the boundary between the official and unofficial spheres.

Never mind duplication. I've dealt with Canadian immigration before, and I can say that they are absolutely clueless. But it's not their fault. I can imagine myself as a CBSA officer at an airport. I feel pressure from my superiors to at least make it look like I'm doing something to secure our borders. When a foreigner arrives, unless he comes from the US with which we share at least some data, I have no way of knowing much about that person unless he's on an Interpol advisory. So what do I do? I could do the rational thing of just checking his luggage for narcotics and maybe his phone for any indication of a crime (bearing in mind that his emails and text messages might all be in multiple languages that I don't even know); but beyond that, I can't do much of practical use unless I do find something suspicious in his lugage or in his phone. And if I do need an interpreter (and yes, I've encountered that with the government too), there is also the question of the interpreter's competence, the officer's competence in how to use the aid of an interpreter, and trust between interpreters and officers. I remember a case, an IRB hering, in which an accused appeared to have innocently misspoken but the interpreter, perhaps fearing that the Minister's counsel could use it unfairly against the accused, appeared to have corrupted the itnerpretation. I've come across cases at an airport where a CBSA officer was questioning a traveler and seemed to not understand the cultural context of the ansers to the questions. When the interpreter interrupted to explain this to the offier, the officer told her that her job was to interpret so she should just interpret. In other words, there might not even be much respect or trust that exists between an officer and his interpter. That just compounds problems. I've also dealt with provincial marriage registrars in Ontario. On one occasion, the person presented a birth certificate from mainland China translated by a certified Ontario translator and a Hong Kong passport. Since the Ontario standard follows Mandarin but the Hong Kong passport follows Cantonese, her name was spelt differently between the two and so the marriage registrar strugled to identify them as belonging to the same person. If I'm a CDSA officer, because the pressure's on me to 'do my job,' I might feel pressure to ask silly and irrelevant questions as busy work just to make it look like I'm doing my job and maybe even refuse a person entry based on an irrelevant response on his part, again, just to make it look like I'm doing my job. Like I said, I've dealt with Canadian immigration, and the above is precisely how it does down. They're working by the seat of their pants, flipping coins and reading tarot cards and peering into crystal balls to figure out whom to let in figuratively speaking, all because we irrationaly fear the 'new world order.' I've dealt with the Canada Revenue Agency too. Do you know how they check whether a foreign national living in Canada as a permanent resident has earned any money abroad? They ask her! That's it. They have no other system in place to figure it out. Now let me ask you. Under such a primitive system, how can they even pretend to have the ability to identify international money laundering? In my line of work, I deal with many federal government agencies, and you'd be surprised at the language barriers that exist between colleagues at certain government offices. Yes, between colleagues! Most of the above problems do not stem from lack of technology. The technology is most certainly there to address these issues. The problem is an irrational fear of developing an international databese for practical purposes. Even the TSA, for all of their macho appearance and their crusade to protect 'Merica's borders, don't really know that much about the person entering their country unless that person's committed a crime that has put him online. Just watch the old CBSA shows on Youtube. When they catch a person, it's either because of that person's own incompetence (i.e. admitting to something or leaving it on their smarphone or having drugs in their possession), or because their crime was so serious that you can find their name and read about them online. Sure it's a little different between Canada and the US because we share information, or when dealing with a major criminal on the Interpol list. Beyond that though, let's be honest, our border agents truly are clueless.

Maybe, but that still doesn't explain subsidies to the fuel industry.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/energy-sector-package-sohi-1.4950619 The government wants a carbon tax to deter oil consumption. Logically, the goal is to deter fuel consumption and logically, this should reduce car sales and fuel consumption. No problem there so far if a government can accept that that's the whole point of a carbon tax and so adapts accordingly (such as by lowering other taxes to encourage economic development elsewhere or provides skills training for workers affected by these declines. Unfortunately, and perhaps shockingly, it appears that those who promoted the carbon tax have been taken by surprise by declines in the auto and fuel industries even though that was the whole point of it!!!! So now they're proposing bailing out the auto and fuel industries, which of course would totally undermine the whole point of the carbon tax. It's like stepping on the gas peddle and on the brake peddle at the same time! Does the government even know what it's doing here? If it's going to tax fuel only to then subsidize it, then that defeats the whole point of a carbon tax and so we might as well just scrap it. If the goal is in fact to reduce fuel consumption, then we need to accept that a decline in the auto and fuel sectors will be a logical consequence of that and to adapt accordingly such as by lowering taxes elsewhere. I favour the latter option myself; but either way, let's at least ensure that we maintain consistent policies and not waste tax dollars supporting two contradictory government policies that just undermine one another. What are your thoughts on how to eliminate this ridiculous contradiction in government policies. It's like its left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

The first step would be to have leaders of character to build the system. That's just the first challenge.

Giving any bank carte blanche to print money would lead to out of control inflation, which hurts the poor the most. The only real solution is austerity (tax and cut).

Some of the wealthiest states have already adopted mostly unilateral free trade, like Hong Kong and Singapore. Real-life examples trump hypotheticals.

That's the problem. We focus too much on nominal income rather than real income. If the cost of living drops, then we won't need higher wages, right?

If they produce everything and we nothing, then they won't want to sell to us since we wouldn't be able to pay them. As a result, the moment the CAD gets too weak, they'd stop selling to us. The purpose of selling to us is to acquire CAD so that they can buy from us. They're not a charity.

It natrually balances itself over time.

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/economy-budget/342153-we-should-thank-china-for-its-foolish-steel-dumping Economists understand that a country that dumps a product on another is actually hurting itself by investing so many resources on producing a product that it then sells at a loss and that a country that buys such a product benefits from the ability to buy a product more inexpensively than it could have produced it itself.

That could never happen: any economist will tell you that. Even if every country subsidized everything and dumped it on Canada, they would get nothing in return. What would be the point? In the mean time, we'd just produce for ourselves. Sweet deal if you ask me. Now the above is extreme, but it makes the point. More realistically, Brazil wouldn't be giving us anythng for free. It would still charge us for it, but just below the market price. So what does that mean? well, it means that it would be giving us somethng valuable for a few Canadian dollars. what would be in it for them? well, a few Canadian dollars? What will they want to do with those Canadian dollars? Flush them down the toilet? Of course not: they worked hard for those few Canadian dollars so they'd want to buy a Canadian prodcut with it. But since we would not be subsidizing anything, they'd have to exhcange those CAD for the Canadian product at market price. In other words, we'd be buying from them at below market price and they from us at market price. Who's getting the better deal there? Since they couldn't buy as much from us, we couldn't export as much to them. So be it. We'd invest the rest of our effort in producing for ourselves. We really do need to teach economics in high school.

Oh I understand, and where's the problem if the Brazilian government wants to force a Brazilian taxpayer to subsidize a product that a Brazilian company is selling to me. I'd be thankful to the Brazilian people for that gift since it would hurt them and benefit me.

We probably will need world government eventually, albeit in a highly decentralized world federation. I don't know how much you've dealt with Canadian immigration, but they know far less about our immigrants than you might realize. Most of their assessments are literally based on guess work and gut feelings. The same applied when I went abroad. Foreign governments could confirm so little about me that they pretty much had to just trust me. People seem to have this impression that imigration departments have some kind of international database they can access to find out about you. They don't. Even the CRA has few ways to really know how much you've earned abroad. Marriage registrars likewise have few ways to know if a person is still married abroad. For the most part, the CBSA, the CRA, and marriage registrars can do nothing more than to create pseudo-scientific policies and methods to give the public the impression that they know what they're doing and to create busy work for themselves in the bureaucracy. That's one thing I liked about airport security in Hong Kong. While they scanned for narcotics, they didn't waste their time and ours with pseudo-scientific questioning methods. In short, they recognized their limits and didn't bother pretending otherwise. It's not that they were naive, just that they recognized that they had few ways to confirm the truth of our claims and so weren't going to waste our time and make themselves look like incompetent buffoons with guess work and gut feelings. In Canada, the CBSA can sometimes come across like foolish buffoons in their irrational line of questioning at airports, and I mean really eye-rolling stuff. Let's face it: an organization comes across as far more competent and professional and knowledgeable when it just recognizes and acknowledges its limitations rather than pretend that it can do something through pseudo-scientific means that we can all see through. Worse yet, from a security viewpoint, isn't it safer for security agencies to just admit that they know little about someone than to pretend that they know everything about them? At least in jurisdictions like Hong Kong, they'll be more vigilant in their recognition of their limitations whereas in Canada, we just assume that immigration officials really know what they're doing.

Given China's more authoritarian nature, doesn't it make sense to limit trade to freer and more democratic business models?

I'd be even more in favour of unilateral global free trade within five years too, but I thought within seventy years could make it more palatable for more cautious voters. Yet the word 'within' wiuld allow a government to accelerate it if it wanted to.

I did mean 70 years with inctemental steps every five years, and yes I know that any government could roll back any progress made. But politically, it would be difficult for a government to roll it back without a counter-referendum.

1. Remain in the USMCA. 2. Unilateral global free trade within seventy years with initial steps in that direction within five years and additional steps taken every five years thereafter. If the majority of Canadians vote option 2, Canada could still sign trade agreements with other states on the condition that those agreements do not restrict Canada's freedom to adopt unilateral global free trade in tariffs and quotas, with those agreements limiting themselves to non-tariff and non-quota matters like labelling and packaging rules, phytosanitary rules, etc. Option 2would provide reasoanble clarity and reasonable flexibility built into its answer to ensure that Canada doesn't end up in the same mess as in the Brexit referendum. If any future government deos not like that direction, it could present another referendum on another federal election ballot to stop it; but since the referendum would call on Parliament to take some kind of step towards unilateral global free trade every five years, we'd have seen at least some improvement even if a futrue referendum puts a stop to that process. It would also give businesses more than enough time to adapt to the changes.

I think the OP made it clear that I was referring to political and not economic matters here. We could still trade with China, but we want to ensure they can't engage too easily in political activity in Canada. That's all. As for Canadian producing higher-valued products, we would need to promote freer trade (and I would be in favour of unilaterally dropping all tariffs and quotas on China for example) and invest more in universal compulsory education. Are we prepared to do that?

If you're referring to the arrest, that was strictly apolitical. Even our politicians have no power over this. They did not request the arrest and had no power to prevent it either. It's now up to a judge to make that decision. That's what the PRC needs to understand. The PRC will do what it wants, but Canada will never (or at least I hope will never) blur the line between the legislative and judicial branches of the government. In canada, the two are very separate, and for good reason. Now as for the economic question. Just as Canada has no control over Trump's insanity, it has no control over China's bullying either. With that in mind, we should just focus on Canada. Clearly a country like the US or China that whos the will to bully Canada is a country Canada should approach with caution. Limiting Canadian trade with China to sole proprietorships, worker cooperatives, and consumer-cooperative natural monopolies would grreatly minimize the PRC government's ability to intervene in Canadian political affairs while still allowing ordinary Canadians and ordinary Chinese to trade with one another. Canada could easily compensate by unilaterally dropping tariffs and quotas against China. On the matter of Chinese espionage, I'll give you an idea of how much I dislike espionage. When I lived in China, had I ever found out that my Canadian neighbour was spying in China, I myself would have turned him in to the Chinese authorities. Now, given how I love Canada, imagine how I feel about the idea that a Chinese entity could be spying on Canada!

Limiting trade with mainland China to sole proprietorships, worker cooperatives, and consumer-cooperative natural monopolies would not greatly limit trade. For example, large Chinese companies like Huawei would still be able to sell to Canada, but just through the proxy of one of these smaller or more democratically-managed businesses. This would place a third-party business between us and so just make it much more difficult for a business like Huawei to engage in any political activity in Canada though such a proxy.

If we give in to a bully, it bullies us even more. If we don't give in, sure China might be able to impose some hardships on Canada, but so be it. We'd adapt. I think limiting trade with China to sole proprietorships, worker cooperatives, and consumer-cooperative natural monopolies would still allow Canada to trade quite freely with China while providing reasonable protection against Chinese interference. By the way, I think we never should have allowed ourselves to kowtow to Trump's bullying tactics and never should have signed onto the USMCA either. Given the tensions with our two main trading partners right now, I think one possible solution would be: 1. Unilateral global free trade but limited to sole proprietorships, worker cooperatives and consumer-cooperative natural monopolies with any jurisdiction that does not adhere to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but open to all businesses otherwise. Any trade agreement beyond that should limit itself to non-tarif and non-quota matters that do not infringe on Canada's unilatral trade arrangement. If a country wants to retaliate, we should just bite the bullet and move on but never kow tow.

'Canada' can't follow through on anything since 'Canada' has no say in it. It's in the hands of a judge to decide based on the rule of law. That's it.

I'm usually for free trade and open borders, but the PRC is a unique situation given how the PRC government can intervene in private business decisions for political purposes. With that, I'd say Canada should limit trade with China to sole proprietorships, worker cooperatives, and consumer-cooperative natural monopolies. While this would not totally neutralize the PRC government's ability to interfere, it would make it much more difficult for it to do so given the tendency for a sole proprietorship (especially when it's defined more narrowly to mean a business of one person with no employees) to operate on a large scale and for cooperatives to abide by internally more democratic structures. What would be your thoughts on imposing such a limitation on trade with China? Would this be too strict or a reasonable precautionary limitation?

Hard to say. How much knowledge do you have and what kind? How much money do you have? What's your knowledge of the local market. There are jsut some of the questions you'd want to answer before making a decision either way. Clearly, working for someone else could expand your skills further, but again, depends on your circumstances.