ZenOps

China just wants the carbon fuel. Its almost the exact same scenario with the railroads. China has absolutely zero problem with the Crown Corporation actually owning the Canadian National Railway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_corporations_of_Canada#History The main reason China helped build the railway is to share in the movement and trade of hundreds of millions of tonnes of wheat, copper, and now sulphur to China. They could care less who actually owns the railway as long as the resources keep on flowing. I'm pretty sure its the exact same thing with the oilfields/tarsands/natural gas in Alberta. The Crown can actually own the pipelines and all the infrastructure - but China gets dibs on the final resources. http://www.cn.ca/en/shipping-china-asia-north-america-sulphur-sulfur.htm Sulfur is a huge business nowadays - many a train are totally filled with sulfur nowdays (maximum 115 128,700 kilgram loads per shipment) China is *very* happy to see 28 million kilograms of sulfur ship from Canada twice a day. The railroad is a resounding sucess in that respect (And there is no way you are putting 28 million kilograms on gasoline trucks without totally screwing up the one highway every day.) http://www.shell.ca/home/content/can-en/products_services/solutions_for_businesses/sulphur/ Can Canada use that much sulphur locally? Hell no - we simply can't use it. In many ways it a waste product of gas refining, sort of like how drywall is just gypsum which was at one point just a waste product of copper mining.

Of course immigrants from certain countries are going to have a rougher time. Plop a French only speaking Quebecer with professional welding experience - in Alberta and he/she will probably not make as much money as an English speaking welder. Why? Everthing takes just a little bit longer to get things done. Plop an Albertan stripper into a Montreal club and he/she will probably take a little bit longer to get established ((mentioned just for the sake of equality) Thats not to say that it should not be done that way. Would a Chinese welder who has worked in a world class metal foundry be able to adjust quicker to a welders job than an African metal worker who still forges with an open pit fire and hammer? Probably, but good luck trying to get someone over here who already is already in a world class facility and content where they are. Many an Nova Scotian has made their way to Alberta - Only to turn back when they can't handle the level of grunt work that is necessary in the oilpatch. Canada would have a population growth of about 0.3% naturally, and 0.9% with immigration. 0.9% is pretty much on par with the US, we just require more immigrants to achieve it. http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/populationgrow.htm

Hey someone has to build the Mckenzie Gas pipeline (over one billion linear cubic feet of compressed natural gas per day) Is your average PHD going to haul, weld pipe, and freeze his ass off in -45 degree weather North of Alberta where there isn't a town for a hundred miles? Canada is still young, it needs infrastructure. Road, railroad, and now for sure pipeline workers. I think what Ignatieff is suggesting is less PHD's, and MORE skilled trade workers (like welders)

Tarsands extraction = difficult. Even more difficult and labour intensive than coal mining. Canada = not desperate for oil locally, and does not have a workforce willing to labour like a coal miner. China = desperate for oil, and has available labour. Perfect fit.

This is Canada, you are unlikely to need to do anything to anyone, with man-sluts having 23 partners in a lifetime: http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/06/29/are-we-blushing-yet/ Just for the sake of equality - I've met more than my share of "biters" That is women that have an unusual tendency to bite further than skin deep when doing the horizontal mambo. If you need to rape in Canada, you are doing something horribly, horribly wrong (or maybe you are a completely unlikeable person, like a sexist politician or something)

This is a good point. Most people do not have perfect 20/20 vision either. At somewhere around 17/20 vision at 50 inch screen size - people tend to not really notice the difference between highdef and upscaled standard definition. Everything is naturally blurry to people who are borderline contact or glasses wearing. I actually found that watching movies in 120hz (from a 24hz source like DVD's and Bluray) provided a better quality upgrade than DVD to Bluray itself. I also greatly prefer TV's that have full colour gamut CCFL's (proper reds) The "jumpiness" especially in things like end credits rolling up the screen was just plain annoying at 60hz, and once you've seen a full colour gamut TV - you will wonder why everything was orange before. Honestly all of this stuff depends heavily on the persons own level of perception. 3D requires too much demand on the viewer to be within a certain level of perceptual ability to fully enjoy.

Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net? I don't have a problem with any corporation (British Crown or otherwise) being the future. Sony could technically take over the world too. Bono makes more than the combined GDP of Dublin, Ireland.

To say that Canada is functioning economically well in this recession is a result of good local governance is not true in my opinion. Canada has done well because of diversity. Not so much ethnic or language based (although we do have French and English as main languages) But because of the five big Canadian banks, and seperate and safer lending practices for "trusts" (some would say more leftist lending practices.) To be perfectly honest - the banking system of Canada is much more like the Emperor-like Imperialist Chinese system (before communism) and the governance system most definitely British Imperial Law (of which is still mostly applicable to Canada in 2010) Canada has definitely followed the economic practices of the "Chinese local grocer, selling pick axes to the gold rush miners" Which is - Financially sound investments. The US main problem is that they tend to conglomerize into one gigantic entity "too quickly, to an actual fault" like the melting pot, and gigantic banks that are "too big to fail" - and yet they do. Borgification while having strengths - does have serious flaws as well. The US with 350 million citizens no doubt would have weathered the recession better if they had closer to perhaps 10 to 20 "main banks" Canada has taken a slightly different approach where we have put redundancies in the economic and social system with more realistic growth. As for democracy - we are barely crawling our way to representational democracy if we were not under the shadow of the Crown. I don't know if Canada has the military capacity or even the population density to think about a true indepenant form of democracy without having serious issues that must be ironed out first (which the Government should be doing instead of prorogueing every year and spending 90% of their time on beaureaucratic shuffles)

Its funny too, even nowadays... Try explaining to a Texan coming to Alberta, trying to buy up land - that they do not and cannot own the mineral rights to the land (the oil) as its owned by the Crown Corporation (The Queen) And damn - if its becoming increasingly difficult to shift between the US and Canada, for fear of the "brain drain" upon leaving a country. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/03/20/galloway-ban-canada-kenney.html Pshh - If Galloway even set foot in Canada he would be thrown in jail nowadays, lol. If Rob Anders ever set foot in the US - I'd figure Obama would have him thrown in jail. And if Nelson Mandela set foot in Canada - I'd figure Rob Anders would try to have him thrown in jail too. The Dalai Lama, would be arrested the second he set foot anywhere in China.

Its fine for Americans "Land of the free". There is little reason to hide in that case. You fought for independance and can rely on a local militarily independant government and individual rights to bear arms to protect you from a dictatorship or monarchy, or even a beligerent neighbor. But Canada is still Crown owned, we must play by rules. We are not allowed to have loaded guns. We do not have the even have the right to "enjoy our own property." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsuccessful_attempts_to_amend_the_Canadian_Constitution Also - you are forgetting that while the immigrating country may welcome you with open arms by the official means - the emigrating country may not be willing to let go of you. Chinese Imperialists fleeing communism in China were not easily parted with (much for their wealth as much as their social impetus). Much like Austrians fleeing Germany for the US "The Sound of Music" the official route would have been barred entirely by a local government unwilling to part with citizens. This was much more the case at the turn of the century 1800-1900's as the cost of unofficial immigration was inflation adjusted - much more in the millions of dollars per person. The last of which were the europeans fleeing WWI and WWII (Yes, many were draft dodgers, who did not want to have to kill for their country and who could afford to sneak out of it) If by illegal or "Criminal" you include european draft dodgers - then yes you are probably right bang on in your assesment. "Criminal" is relative. IE: If you are leaving a communist country where owning personal property and adhereing to a capitalist system is "criminal" then yes, a lot of illegal immigrants are criminal.

The requirements for "legal" immigration are still fairly strict. English fluency (or French since 1990's) is a requirement for everything but refugee and special cases, or the very young (ESL programmes) The point system is still heavily skewed, just like an IQ test is heavily skewed towards language an upbringing. Which is of course in its own way a little bit exclusionary, regardless of mental or physical capacity, work ability or general appeal as a citizen. Others still greatly greatly fear being noticed by the British Empire. They will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to "fly under the radar" even if not criminal - just to avoid scrutiny of a monarchy that has subjugated arguably half of the world. I imagine it would be no different if some other empire was in control (say if Germany won WWII) there are always people who will want to avoid being noticed. I would not be surprised at all - to see a native Canadian leaving Canada completely avoiding "standard" means of transportation.

No big deal. Wiebo Ludwig bombed 5 Canadian oilpipelines and got 18 and a half months in jail. Hes also accused of shooting a teenager who trespassed on his 35 million square foot property. I mean really, who the hell else is going to shoot and kill a kid on a 35 million square foot farm? The neighbor who doesn't even have line of sight? Yeesh, lol. Wake me up when a Tamil tiger bombs something in Canada.

What you are forgetting - is how pervasive the media is. If you believe that everything you see is where they say it is coming from. The common hoax theory is of course that they just shot a 10 pound satellite relay into the side of the moon (much like a regular satellite - but with an 8 second delay instead of 250 millisecond) and that they were just bouncing either a prerecorded or time delayed feed from a California studio. Which of course - is totally possible. You can never know for sure when you flip your TV to your favorite channel or go to your favorite .com site that you are actually going to the right place - you rely on things like "responsible" government to do that for you. (And for .coms, the 11 supercomputer clusters than feed the legit DNS.com registry to the entire world) Like reporters in the 1980's who got caught lying about where they were in the world - and were just sitting in their studio in front of a bluescreen. I never really liked the "flag waving hoax" idea. I mean really, if you are going to hoax the whole thing - they would have definitely used a "air evacuated studio", or of course the real thing (on the moon) I get the feeling they put that one out on purpose - just to debunk the hoaxers easier later. Which does make one wonder if you are putting out hoaxes to hoax hoaxers, what the hell is the point? It does have a lot to do with faith. Believe a little bit that god does exist is about the same as landing on the moon. What is the best proof we have that it actually happened with the best technology we have in 2009 from Nasa themselves? A five pixel high set of photos. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html If thats the best we can do today 40 years later - I don't want to believe that we that much on a fast track regression to cavemen. Of which I think this is apt "Let the people who grew up in the 1960's believe that man landed on the moon, Let the people who grow up in the year 2010 believe that it never happened for their sakes."

Well put. The optimist in me - says it can be done. Just like how Canada can potentially completely break away from Britain somehow and yet still be friends and have functioning and productive working relationships. An entire nation of a billion citizens - is about to hit lower middle class... Is the world ready? I'm not sure, but if it can be done without anybody blowing up anything - it could be time for China's first renaissance.

+1 There is no better way to bring about positive change - than to make sure everyone is productive and making tons of money.

Canadian natives are alive, that automatically makes them better than US natives. As for regular steel - Iron is losing its lustre, Molybdenum (stainless steel) is where its at.

As for the moon hoax believeability. US Gallup poll in 1999 says 6% say hoax, 5% undecided, 89% happened. British approximately 25% hoax Russian 28% hoax Canada did not do a poll large enough to be statistically accurate but its somewhere around 25% hoax, 25% undecided. The percentages for "hoax" are steadily increasing every year.

I don't think the boy who cried wolf applies here. "Wolf" was cried - and we created a vaccine to innoculate everyone. That some people pull out pitchforks and have a reactionary response to a threat every time it happens is unfortunate. What is that equivalent to in the fairy tale story? Putting up a barb wire fence around the town so that if a wolf ever did attack - they would be forever protected from it. Happy ending for everyone. If you do the pitchforks everytime - its bad. If you put up a fence so that it can never happen again - its win win yes?

Well, if you believed the US media back in 1969, I guess you will believe it today... After all - US presidents never lie either. Even Mythbusters did a "revisit" episode, where they admit they make mistakes from time to time. "Weapons of mass Destruction!" "I did not have sexual relations with that woman!" "I did not inhale!" "I am not a crook!" This guy has a right to be skeptical about the lethality of H1N1. I have the right to be skeptical about a manned mission to the 1/6th gravity manned mission to the moon, where it takes about two million pounds of rocketfuel to launch something off of the earth, but just ten years earlier the US couldn't beat the USSR in putting an 84 kilogram object 250 miles up (Sputnik)

But its a miniscule amount. Much less than the average Canadian prescription per month, nevermind year. If Pharmaceuticals want to fear monger a 100 year flu or even a seasonal flu - Let them. The price is absolutely tiny. If Pharmaceuticals want to fear monger than you pecker is going to fall off if you don't use Viagra - then its a problem. IMO it was the right thing to do according to about half of the Canadian population who has voluntarily taken the shot. There will always be skeptics and realists. Heck - We never landed on the moon - and the US spent how many trillions on that?

$8 per flushot and about $2 per person for the advertising to get the message out. Money well spent for an ounce of prevention. Heck, if everyone spent $10 to change the oil in their car when they are supposed to - We'd probably all save thousands of dollars each (But then again - all the repair shops would be cyring too) Honestly - the extra vaccine we are now shipping to Mexico has probably improved our relations immeasureably. Including now grateful natives in this country who may possibly be placated that they are "alive". $10 million spent on vaccine is probably worth 1 billion spent on climate change in terms of political influence.

It is a valid point - that a dictatorship usually is better for the economy in general during a recession. But, even so - a Dictatorship must be a working dictatorship to be of use to the populace. As far as I know - The government could be eating ice cream and sitting on the couch right now.

The official reason we are prorogueing? "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." If you prorogue for 2 months out of every year - you need 17% more government officials to make up the difference, haha.

Thing is... Britains crown corporation technically owns the minerals rights to most of Alberta, it is in many ways no different than any other company that owns mineral rights. Up until now - the Queens right has not been exercised - but can and has been used before during wartime (War Measures Acts) If Alberta were to seperate, it would not change this fact in Britain Crown Corporations eyes. And if a seperated Alberta did not pledge allegiance and fealty to the Crown - then it would be considered an act of independance. Of course - Most acts of independance are grounds for declarations of war. When China petroleum invested 1.9Billion buying up Alberta Tarsands, guess where they spent most of the negotiation time - Yup, Britain... I don't even believe its required to even mention the deal to Stephen Harper to let China buy up Alberta oil (The Canadian govt aren't working anyways - so obviously these deals are going through without their approval, dissapproval or even knowledge) That Canada gained partial lawmaking and repealing ability from the British sometime around 1982 does not change the mineral rights issues. People like Weibo Ludwig do not own the mineral rights to their land, they never did. Most farmers in Alberta do not have mineral rights to the land under the soil. Where I think people get confused is where homesteading landrights include mineral rights - Like Texas and if anyone remembers the old TV show "The Beverly Hillbillies" That is not how it works in Canada. Does Gordon Campbell own the land his house is sitting on in BC? Yes. Does he own the mineral rights to it? No. But at least the mineral rights aren't owned by the BCC, thanks to that loophole. http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/04/19/CompanyGrabsMining/

But would Alberta Seperate as a sovereign nation? We don't really need as much approval from the Federal Canadian govt, as much as the "other" power. Unless it was done by military means, in which case you can bet that Charles is going to enact War Measures and come swooping down from his throne and take all of the oilsands away from you faster than a Japanese Canadian during wartime - *Just* to remind you whos the boss. There are a lot of arrogant MP's in Alberta - who have never been on the spear end ot the British Empire. Every man in Alberta is a peasant to the Imperium, even Rob Anders. Should we run to Obama for protection? We have to run to someone.. And if that is the case - how much does the US get to carve up Alberta? They won't do it for free - I will tell you that right now. BC is a little different. http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/04/19/CompanyGrabsMining/ Loosening mining rights is a very tricky thing (although in BC its for metals and not oil) BC has a loophole from 1859 - from the old "gold rush" days where there were specific laws made for the area.