Scotty

Your statement has no basis in fact. It's sole basis seems to be you don't like right wingers. That is no way to make an intelligent decision. You've already admitted you never read their claim never investigated it, and apparently don't bother to read other studies either. You have no idea what is and isn't factual and should not be making statements which suggest you do.

The concerns I have here are with regard to the violation of human and constitutional rights, not the cost, and that would be the provincial government - which oversees policing in the province, and which bears some responsibility for not clarifying that so-called new law.

Little problem with that being that if there was an election held today Harper would win it. What were you saying about 'popular'?

It is, unfortunately, a provincial matter. And the provincial government in this case is notorious for its cowardice and its refusal to involve itself in anything controversial. It especially doesn't want to involve itself in anything where it might have to admit it screwed up - as in this nonsensical law the police were allegedly supposed to have.

This is kind of stupid, and I'm surprised no one has noted it yet, but the CRTC has backed off its plan to change the rules. CRTC ditches plan to allow fake news So here's my take on it. For ten years the House of Commons committee has been telling the CRTC that in light of a Supreme Court decision, this regulation is now unconstitutional. After ten years of bureaucratic inertia, the CRTC finally announces plans to change the regulation. But now, the committee has a majority of opposition members, and they see the opportunity to portray the Tories as some evil cabal that wants to bring in false news. They make a big fuss. All sorts of people who don't know any better respond and make a big fuss and send in indignant emails and notes, and the CRTC then backs off. Yayyy! They get to keep a regulation which has never been used and is unconstitutional anyway! Yaayyy! See all the clowns in the Globe and Mail celebrate their great victory!

But that in no way helps the people who were already here. There are many investment opportunities around. And I don't believe that as a society it's wise to spend billions of dollars every year bringing in immigrants just so our house prices can continue to rise. I have posted cites which suggest the cost to government at all level can be as high as 20 billion per year, and that the influx of unskilled workers has cost us from 1-2 points of gdp growth per year.

You have a cite to back that up?

There were and remain a number of troubling issues with the performance - or lack - of the police during the G20. But all can be traced to basic competence - or lack. It is evident to me, as a conservative supporter of police, that the police efforts in Toronto were poorly organized, and that the police themselves were poorly disciplined and poorly supervised. Their operations were clearly set in stone, so much so that even as a small band of protesters were smashing windows as they walked along the street, large groups of police were actually moving away from them, having been ordered to ignore them and follow the main body of the protesters instead. In the first instance, dozens of riot equipped police simply watched from up the block as people smashed windows, then the police turned and walked away. It seems to me that the police felt publicly humiliated after scenes of window smashing and those burning police cars were flashed around the country, and an institutional mindset came down which demanded revenge. From that point on, the city was divided into two groups There were the police, and then there were the enemy. Anyone on the street other than police wound up in that second category, and was subject to unprovoked attack and arrest without warning or provocation. I'm especially troubled by the violence and the willingness to inflict it by so many police, and that the other police looking on accepted it so calmly. Police, on numerous occasions, broke the law, and committed a variety of offenses, including assault, with what I think can best be described as a collective sense of impunity. It was as if the police felt they were now above the law, and had free reign to do anything they wanted to anyone they wanted for any reason they wanted. Even those police who didn't outright attack people seemed to look on with a shrug as their colleagues did. And if there were any supervisors present who cared about that they didn't make their presence or unhappiness known. The fact so many police removed all identification is equally troubling, indicating that they planned to break the law and didn't want anyone identifying them. For those tempted to defend the police I want to be clear on this point. The police, on numerous occasions, attacked people without provocation or cause, and arrested people without warning or any evidence or suspicion they had done anything illegal, then held them in primitive conditions in cages without even the most basic of courtesies. Police like to think of themselves as professionals. We pay them a very high salary; more than we pay teachers, for example, or numerous other highly skilled, highly educated groups. What was evident in the behaviour of the police is that this is not a professional group, as such. These are a bunch of young men high on testosterone who have gone through a twelve week course at the Ontario Police College. Want to be a hairstylist? The college course for that is 45 weeks. Horticulture - those people who do gardens and such - is a 2 year course. The law clerk program is also 2 years. Massage Therapy is 3 years. Hell, even Kitchen and Bathroom Design is a full year, 52 weeks. Police training again - 12 weeks. You don't become a professional in 12 weeks. And I'm troubled by the willingness of the police in Toronto to act like a gang of thugs. Theirs was not the behaviour of well-trained, competent professionals. It was the behaviour of a mob. There's long been an assumption on the part of many that a police state in Canada couldn't happen because even if the politicians gave such orders, the police wouldn't carry them out. I think we have to have a lot of doubt now, about what the police would and wouldn't do. Because in Toronto, none of the police appeared to have any difficulty with violating the law and people's civil rights for very, very little cause. Imagine if these 'professionals' are presented with a sense of dramatic danger to the state and told they must protect it. What might they be willing to do then?

That post offers no real value or information. Aside from the obvious ideological disagreement you would have with any Conservative, would you care to expand upon why you don't like Kenney?

These are the kinds of numbers which places like Fox News come up with. They sound superficially like something which would excite the tiny synapses of their viewers, but in reality they're utterly without value. You cannot use the 'average' private sector salary to compare to the public sector, even where the actual jobs are roughly comparable. You need to disregard all the jobs working for crappy little mom and pop shops, and the hard nosed, 100% annual turnover places which pay so crappy. You need to strictly compare what public servants make to private sector counterparts in large, unionized organizations to have any sense of fairness. The average federal public servant has more education and more seniority than their average private sector counterpart, since the latter includes tons of people who'd never be able to even apply for the government, much less get hired.

del.

If there's ever been such a month it hasn't been seen since the French Revolution. On the other hand, EVERY month seems to be Screw Poor People and Screw Middle Class People month.

I don't know about Wisconsin, but are you aware many public service jobs in Canada pay less than their private sector counterparts? For example, you might have a deputy minister running a huge multi-billion dollar department with tens of thousands of employees being paid $200k per year. Under your scheme, he would have to be paid $5-25 million per year. And senior financial people would have to be up for million dollar bonuses. Are you okay with that?

So? A bigger pie with more people eating it does not give any individual more to eat. We've grown by several million in the last ten years. Are Canadians any better off than they were in 2000? Are we any better off than we were in 1990? 1980? 1970? I don't see1 how. There's been technological progress which has done a lot of nice things, but are we, individually any richer in any way? So what has this 'growing economy' done for us?

I didn't give any statistics. Do you have a source that says those jobs are plentiful? Because I used to work those kinds of jobs and they weren't all that easy to find. Do you have a suggestion why they wanted more refugees unless it was for low-skilled labour? Is there any indication low skilled labour is in short supply in this country?

Really? Why?

I'm surprised Rae has anything against Jihadis. Hasn't he been portraying himself as Omar Khadr's big brother for the last several years?

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Because the larger the population the greater the living conditions? I don't think business is evil either. I think business is amoral. They are neither good or evil. Business is about making money. And the best way to do that is with really, really cheap labour. You'll note they call for more refugees. How do you imagine that helps economic growth? Refugees generally have low skill sets, low education and no language skills. They are the most likely to wind up in poverty and crime, and the most likely to, if they work, work very low level, hand-to-mouth type jobs.

Who said personal taxes are 45% I got that from you but I don't see Fraser saying it. My impression is this is TOTAL taxes. Their tax freedom day varies from province to province, as well. I looked at their report and it starts out as follows: It is nearly impossible for ordinary Canadians to have a clear idea of how much tax they really pay. For example, while Canadians are painfully aware of sales taxes, calculating the total amount paid would require people to track all of their purchases over the course of a year. There are also many taxes of which Canadians are largely unaware because they are built into the price of goods and services. Such taxes include import duties, excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol, amusement taxes, and gas taxes. Most Canadians are unaware that they pay the employers’ portion of payroll taxes such as Employment Insurance and Canada Pension Plans premiums and other taxes levied on businesses. Though businesses pay these taxes directly, the cost of business taxation is ultimately passed on to ordinary Canadians.

Neither has the Fraser Institute, as far as you know. But you didn't read the Fraser report, and you didn't read the Conference Board report either.

You don't know that at all. The average Canadian salary is what, about $45,000? So let's see, if we figure the federal tax load is 33%, and the person owns a house which requires a $2500 (that's on the low side) municipal tax payment, then their tax rate is already up past 38%. Add in provincial taxes, then sales taxes. How much of our income do we actually pay in sales taxes? If we say 5% then we're already up to 42%, and personally, I think we pay more than 5%. I think it's probably closer to 10%. Anyway, I don't see the 45% figure as necessarily outrageous. I'd have to look at the data - which is what you should have done.

You dismiss the Fraser report because of perceived bias and then you embrace a report by a business advocacy group? Yes, as I previously admitted, big business loves immigration. It even loves refugees. You'll note the report called for more refugees... Why? Because it helps keep wages down. The report you refer to was financed by the following organizations. Lead Investors KPMG LLP Ontario Ministry of Finance RBC Financial Group Scotiabank Sustaining Investors Alberta Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing Bombardier Inc. Brookfield Lepage Johnson Controls Ltd. Business Development Bank of Canada Deloitte & Touche LLP E.H. Price Limited EnCana Corporation Government of Saskatchewan Hydro-Québec Industry Canada Infrastructure Canada Merck Frosst Canada Ltd. Microsoft Canada Co. National Bank of Canada Nexen Inc. Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Rio Tinto Alcan Siemens Canada Limited SNC Lavalin Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Sustainable Development Technology Canada Symcor Inc. TELUS Communications Company Viterra It's always good to know who's paying for a report, if at all possible. Now, unlike yourself, I actually looked at the report. It's a pretty breathlessly one sided call for more immigrants in order to serve business better. There are no downsides mentioned. There's nothing in the report about overcrowding, pollution, the cost to government of the immigration system, nor, by the way, is there any actual evidence in there, any demographic data, for example, that I could find, on which they are basing their desire for more immigration. Teh Fraser report, on the other hand, uses government demographic data and illustrates the various effects of different levels of immigration.

Federal taxes can be at 33%. Mine are quite a bit higher, I'm afraid. But you have to add in provincial taxes, as well as sales taxes. None of us really add up how much we spend on provincial and federal sales taxes in a year. If we did we'd be a lot angrier. On top of that there are taxes on the goods we buy which we don't even see because they were paid at some earlier level of production, distribution or transportation. For example, just off the top of my head, the taxes on the fuel needed for the trucks which ship your goods to the store. Those taxes become part of the cost of that product, and thus are passed on to you. Oh, and let's not forget municipal taxes. I have to send a check to the city for several thousand dollars every year. In other words, it complicated. And if you really disagreed with when Tax Freedom Day was you ought to have read the background on the report to see their figures. But I bet you didn't do that, did you?

There is a statue of him on the street I go by every day, sitting at his piano, and there's a speaker playing his music