dre

The provinces play a role in that yes. I don't know if my position is a liberal or conservative one... It just seems like common sense to me.

There doesn't need to be, and we don't need to ban anything. Electric motors are far superior to gas engines... even if they can be adopted as daily hoppers around cities that will put a huge dent in emissions. All thats required is for costs to come down a bit. Hybrids can handle the market for people with range concerns. I dont know anyone who has bought a focus that wouldnt rather have a prius... They just cost a bit too much still. That will change. I think the electric revolution will arrive soon without the government having to do all that much.

I don't deny that could be true for construction tradesmen. That does not mean the economy does not need laborers as well.

Again that's only evidence of direct tax transfers. It doesn't take into account any of the other factors. I don't know why you keep posting that. Surely you arent trying to draw a conclusion on the economic impact of immigration based simply on taxation vs government spending??? That would be ludicrous.

What about Albanian sheppards that are allergic to wool?

This is all mindless gibberish. I could care less if we let muslims in or not, and I could care less about immigration levels either. This is your pet topic not mine. I just recognize that a lot of your reasoning is bogus. My life wont change much whether we curtail levels or increase them. And I have advocated changing immigration policy to focus more on economic migrants and less on refugees and family class migrants. I would be fine with that, but I really just don't think the whole issue is that important.

Nobody has ever presented any evidence of that. The only effort I have seen to take all those factors into account, concluded that immigration is still a net benefit to Canadians, but that the benefit is declining. Also its not just banks and construction companies. Nearly 3 quarters of our economy is selling products and services domestically. It effects almost everyone. And real wages are growing slightly over time, and employment is near all-time lows. This "sky is falling because of immigrants" narrative has no credibility.

Maybe the economy needs farmers and shop clerks too? Is food supposed to grow itself just because you don't want arabs here?

The problem is that almost all Canadians already have jobs. So you are actually talking about training the ~5% of workers that havent been able to find gainful employment, or are too useless to even try. Canadians are as capable as anyone else, but yes... There's hundreds of thousands of people that have no real capacity to do anything at all. Some people are useless, and almost all the people that are not, are already employed.

Your judgement of what is "decent", and one dollar will get you a bus (maybe). The reality is that a low paying job is just as important to the economy. In fact studies have found that low income earners actually stimulate the economy more because they spend literally every penny they earn back into the economy. And more to the point, and as I said before, your perspective is limited by the fact you don't understand what money is. You act like it gets spent one time, and is wasted... And you cite reports that completely ignore the macro-economic impact of growing the money supply, and the demand for goods and services, and the taxes paid by all the workers on the supply side. The reality is that any money the government gives, over and above what they collect in taxes will be spent into the economy, and it will be spent over and over again hundreds or thousands of times. You talk like a person is useless if they don't pay taxes, but our economy is driven by consumption... not taxation.

Its not just skilled workers that are important. Unskilled workers are just as important to the economy whether they pay taxes or not. We are almost at what economists consider "full employment". And because the numbers deviate regionally that means in some provinces you literally cannot find workers, or the workers you can find are so "bottom of the barrel" you are better off without them. I run a construction services company in BC... I cant even find people with a drivers license or bank account... never mind skills or work ethic. Your point about capital vs people is bang on, and I have made exactly that point to you numerous times throughout the years. Moving the production to the cheap labor is economically no different than moving the cheap labor to production. If anything the latter is a better domestic option because its easier on the current account. There's less capital flight, and more taxes paid here at home. The bigger question is where we will end up under the banner of "being competitive". Right now it simply means that the countries that treat workers the worst and have the lowest environmental and labor standards are rewarded by investment in production. I bet that If I kept my workers in a cage and burned babies alive to create cheap energy, I could make stuff pretty cheap. And under the current regime I would be rewarded because the "consumer ethics" aspect of the "free market" is gone.

As usual its impossible to even understand what you are talking about. I didnt call Argus any names, I said his assertion was logical fallacy, and thats exact what it is. The rest of your is just gibberish.

The thing is you cant structure reforms against around out-liers. No matter what changes we made there will still be anomalous cases that caused outrage. The key to evaluating our system is to look at the results, and compare them with those of our piers. The reality is murder is declining and our homicide rates are pretty low. Declaring a system "broken" because of an anomalous result is something even a student in grade six should no better than. Its basic analytics.

No the red herring was the "large active chemical weapon manufacturing" capability that Iraq was accused of having prior to the invasion. And nobody said "no WMD's were ever found". Some of stuff WAS found... it was inventoried and destroyed. But it was insignificant when compared to the claims made prior to the war. Christ... even Bush admitted he was wrong. Funny that you guys still stick to this revisionist history.

This is all just logical fallacy. Selective outrage is something you are just as guilty of as anyone else.

Oh I see... youre just kidding. Sorry!

This is pretty much pure mythology. 50 deployed Al-Samoud 2 missiles Various equipment, including vehicles, engines and warheads, related to the AS2 missiles 2 large propellant casting chambers 14 155 mm shells filled with mustard gas, the mustard gas totaling approximately 49 litres and still at high purity Approximately 500 ml of thiodiglycol Some 122 mm chemical warheads Some chemical equipment 224.6 kg of expired growth media No active production of any considerable capacity was ever found. Almost nothing was found at all.

I'm really worried to be honest. I have almost almost all my equity tied up in real-estate and I'm pretty sure there's going to be a big correction soon.

I guess drinking fosters in the green zone, is safer!

Jean deserves credit for Iraq, but we should not have been in AssCrackistan either. We are poorer and deader as a result of that decision.

No its a medical issue. Treating it has a moral issue, or as a matter of willpower has been an abject failure and the medical profession is starting to realize this now. People who are predisposed to drug addiction have physically different brain characteristics... In most cases the configuration and behavior of dopamine receptors. No offense but your posts on this topic literally parrot ideas that have been proven wrong over the course of many decades, and are completely out of touch with modern medicine. Locking up addicts is the most useless and stupid approach possible. Opioid addictions are medically treatable.

Its even better than that. You can flat out make money that never existed before and lend that out.

Yeah well when you're an ideological hack you tend to think along those terms. But for the most those people exist only in your head, just like the caricature of conservatives being uneducated, frightened, rural pig farmers. In the real world the differences between people are smaller and less important. Most of my friends hold both conservative and liberal views. The left/right political spectrum is silly, and people waste way too much time thinking about it.

I don't think it started with Clinton... Men have been treating women like shit for thousands of years, and religion has historically supported the idea that women are worth less. The more secular society becomes the better women are treated. Stories like this might make it seem like all hell is breaking loose, but just a short time ago women could not even testify against their husbands in court. There are still people alive today that lived in a world where women could not vote. Women are much better off in societies that are less religious. Billo is just a loser... no matter what happens in society there will always be some of them.

I dunno! What world do Christians live on?