fellowtraveller

wasn't the Canadian military used in a security capacity at Oka?

I used Kent State as an example of military being involved in civilian security. There are always problems whenever protest meets the law, cops kill , maim and act irresponsibly just as the miltiary might. Shit happens, deal with it. But in the end, flawed security is better than none and there is no reason not to use the skills we have paid for in whatever situation warrants that use.If we save a few hundred million using the army at G8/G20, let's roll.

couple of major errors there. it is $24/hour plusa tremendous benefit package. And I know people who have worked at Costco, you are expected and required to work hard, idleness is not tolerated. Unlike Canada Post. Another significant difference is that Costco has fewer layers of management/supervision. Alberta used to have a whole whack of provincial employees- liquor store cashiers and warehouse types- making that kind of money/benefits. All gone now, privatized,no harm done to society.

No doubt that is true. The Taliban in Afghanistan are not capable of operating with the impunity they enjoyed in the 90s and certainly not capable of staging major missions inside the country, much less outside it. In that sense, mission accomplished. It will be much more difficult to bring ay kind of modest prosperity to the country, and it has nothing to do with the religion, culture, or history. It is because Afghanistan is truly , truly poor: it has little arable land, nothing much for natural resoures and an illiterate populace. The only one of those that we can effect is literacy, and it won't nearly be enough.

All three territories are like that. Yukon has 15 MLAs for 30k people, plus one MP, plus muncipal councils plus an extensive and growing fourth level of governance: First Nations. Madness.

How is it different? The National Guard is more or less a reserve Army/Air Force system with all the same weapons and training as the regular Armed Forces. They were routinely called out and deployed to quell civilian disturbances in America in the 1960s. Kent State, anybody? I just don't see what the problem is with deploying our military to provide security for huge events like G8/G20. It is a cost effective use of trained government staff. What is the problem?

'social science' is an oxymoron. It may be social, but it ain't science.

Red herring alert!! It does not follow that rural or remote areas would need 'massive subsidies' to get first class mail, the transport infrastructure that flies mail into Iqualuit today is not owned or operated by Cabada Post now, nor would it be tomorrow. The volume of mail into Iqualuit or Dognuts, Manitoba is nothing, a complete insignifigance compared to first class volumes into and around large centres. If a first class letter cost $10 instead of $.57 to send there, it would be meaningless compared to the money Canada Post makes on first class mail elsewhere. Look at their revenue streams and how they get to a profitable position...... Admail: this is flyers and all that useless crap you get in your mailbox every day, unaddressed mail. Makes plenty o' money. Courier mail, ExpressPost etc: in direct competition with UPS, FedEx, and Canada Posts private sector Purolator. Profits unclear. First class mail: they cannot help but make buckets of money because they have a legislated monopoly and can charge more or less what they please, though the information age has obliged their own customers to seek many other ways to communicate and bill their clients. All these revenue streams and more have some huge competitive advantages over their competitors, except first class mail where they have no competition. A big advantage is infrastructure, Canada Post was gifted a complete, functional network of real estate, buildings, equipment when they were made a semi-autonomous Crown agency. Since then, they have closed thousands of retail operations that make no money, and spent billions on facilites to improve the network that does enable the revenue streams above. Tons of the local operations have been contracted out and saved them billions in costs with far less risk exposure. By retaining their monopoly in first class, they can piggyback their profitable courier and admail operations, which reduces their overhead expenses significantly. If they lost their first class monopoly, the whole house of cards crashes. Implications for Canadian business and individuals? For the vast majority, the cost of delivering first class mail would drop considerabl;y. Household delivery would be replaced by community boxes, which are already very common as Canada Post has long recognized that it is very costly for them. Rural areas would be served by private sector carriers at greater cost, perhaps subisdized by the savings elsewhere. In any case, the true cost of mail would be evident instead of hidden in the layers of politics, subsidy and privilege that exists today.

Let's do the math. 15,000 letter carriers times $75 k per carrier($50k salary plus $25k benefit cost, minimum)= $1.125 billion per annum. Let's forget aboput the ongong pension and medical benefits for now. You still need perhaps 2000 people to replace them , sorting mail to the household level but not delivering it, and the sort function can be done by contractors for perhaps 2/3 cost, anybody who knows the alphabet can sort mail at the householder level(all the main sorting to post code level is mechanized). So 2000 trained chimps at $50k each = $100 million. Call it a cool $1 billion saved, every year. Knock off a couple hundred million for investment in boxes the first year. We could subsidize Bombardier to build those for a million each or so......

Complete and utter load of uninformed shit. Alberta balanced their budget in the nineties when the price for a barrel of oil was $15. Same conservative government. They did it almost entirely by cutting costs, not by raising taxes or increasing revenues from resources.Next.

??? Nothing i have said is contradictory. I happen to live in an older neighbourhood that gets delivery. Nobody in a neighboiurhood newer than 1985 gets it. Do you want me to use words of one syllable or less to make it easier for you? What I want is for home delivery to be eliminated in Canada and switched to community boxes as already exists in very large chunks of the country. It will involve a loss of privilege for you, and for me, but tough noogies.

Then we'd have to spend a billion bucks to get a battleship, you warmonger. Police work is far more dangerous and challenging than anything in the post office. Consequences of failure in the post office: my Macleans magazine is late. Consequences of cop failure: corpses littering the streets.There is certainly no reason at all that cops and soldiers cannot collaborate on security. Cops can do intelligence and arrests and detention, soldiers can patrol and secure. Makes sense. Nonsense, they are both part of the number one priority for any country that has rule of law: security of the people. They just have somewhat different training and have been given somewhat different mandates, though there is no reason they cannot overlap when needed.

Energy exports to Amerikkka have little to do with Windsor or Detroit. And once the oil starts flowing on long term contracts through large diameter pipes headed West and not South- you'll be back to relying on Venezuela, Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia etc. to fuel your economy. All of that of course assumes you have an economy in a decade or two, it is not looking good now.

Ah, it is explained by the 'Southern Ontario' note under your name, home of exclusivity and privilege not enjoyed by others in Canuckistan.....Hereabouts if you live in the sticks you get mail at a community mailbox or in the nearest town from a post office. If you live in a small community there is no home delivery and has not been for eons. If you are in a city where there is mail delivery but live in a community/subdivision built since 1985(and there are many such), it is exclusively community mailboxes. Same conclusion: home delivery is an expensive and solely political pandering to unions, enjoyed by increasingly few at the expense of all. I also get home delivery, and would give it up in a heartbeat. It would force me to walk up to 100 metres per day.

Do you think the federal govt would give Alberta a couple billion bucks for saving them all the aggravation of not needing a HST?

The first part of your sentence contradicts the second part. Try again. Start by thinking about the word 'govern'.

Ontario is old Canada. Detroit is postcard dead US economy. In the West, they'll be building pipelines and ports to the Pacific to ship energy to China/India.

fellowtraveller, on 30 May 2011 - 08:28 PM, said: "While they are at it, they should legislate an end to home delivery of mail for everybody, not just half the country. It's waste of billions and demonstrably unnecessary." . "And profitable! Given what a crappy job most our cash strapped cities do of clearing snow off the sidewalks we'd have all kinds of old people keeling over dead every day. Just think of the savings! " Ah, yes the emotional appeal! Think of the children!!! Add exclamation marks!!!!!! Fact: no houses built in Canada since 1985 get household delivery, they all have community boxes conveniently located near your home. Nobody rural gets home delivery. Nobody in smaller communities gets home delivery. And nobody is dropping dead on our streets as a result. The reality is that continuation of home delivery is simply a sop, an expensive cookie for the postal unions. There is zero justification for it to continue. Time for it to end, now. And profitable? Nice try. First class mail delivery is profitable for Canada Post, but only because they have a legislated monopoly on same. But that of course has nothing to do with how it is delivered, Canada Post would make a fortune off it going entirely to community mail boxes too- in fact they would make far more since expenses would drop dramatically.

While they are at it, they should legislate an end to home delivery of mail for everybody, not just half the country. It's waste of billions and demonstrably unnecessary. .

There a some signs that Canada acknowledges the slowly waning influence of the US, which will be followed by the depreciaiton of the US $ as the international standard for currency and business. We should be working hard on trade, particularly with the East.

What a load of confused thinking.Governments ate elected to govern, and that very much includes making decisions that are unpopular but judged correct by those given that responsibility by the people. It has little to do with 'wishes'. Unless your name is Tinkerbelle.

How so? Do you think the millions of Canadians who voted them a majority have now changed their minds?

Casnada at #8 and weak sister Iceland at #1 ,most peaceful country? That is crazy and cannot stand. Once we get some tanks back from Afghanistan and those F-35s start getting delivered and we have a serviceable submarine....... I say we steam over to Reykyavik harbour and bomb those codloving poseurs into the Stone Age where they belong. Then we'll be #1, where we belong.

How many civil servants would that take, exactly? They are in AQlberta.It does not matter much if they are nominally in separate unions anyway, education is an industry and principals have nothing to gain by acting as managers should act. The constant refrain from teachers/principals is that education ia a collaborative affair and performance of the teachers cannot be assessed by outsiders. Load of wank, innit?

Every school in Canada already employs a veteran, experienced 'observer' that is or should be very capable of asssessing teachers and their performance. They are called principals.Unfortunately, they do little of worth in this regard since they are members of the same union as the teachers. There is a pretence that they are managers or somehow represent management, but clearly they cannot overcome this conflict of interest and few pretend that they do.