Scotty

Are you suggesting the native gangs in western Canada and the East Indian and Asian gangs in BC are better shots than the Jamaican gangs in Toronto? Maybe if the latter would stop turning their glocks sideways before shooting the damn things...

He probably got it from the US, as that sounds like about their percentage of the population there. And you're partially true but not entirely. Culture and values play a big part, too.

Yes, sir! Okay, where to start. The problems of the Black community in Canada. Hmmm. Boy. The thing is... it's complicated. It's not too complicated to put into a post, but it's complicated enough that most people won't read a post that long. Among the problems is poverty and lack of education among blacks on the East coast - a longstanding problem. In central Canada, where most Blacks are immigrants, the problem lies in their origins, which is mostly from the Caribbean, from countries which themselves have extensive cultural value problems involving crime and family breakdown. Those problems have been transported to Canada, and are most evident in Toronto because of its large Black population. Most Blacks who are of Caribbean origin are raised by single women, and the father is very often not in evidence (the problem exists but to a lesser extent among African origin blacks). These are not cultures which generally have in the past placed a very high importance on education. The dropout rate among Blacks, especially Black males, is very high. This is partly because of a lack of involvement/support from families, and partly due to the lack of importance of education among Black hip-hop/gangsta culture which the majority of young Blacks follow. That same culture encourages a tough-guy mentality which often causes violence over seemingly minuscule provocations. It's not unusual for a man accidentally brushing another man's shoulder in a club to lead to violence, up to and including murder. There's also a near universal view among young Black men, partly as a result of that gangsta/hip hop culture, of themselves as outsiders, and being the victims of a racist white society. This cause a significant number of them to not really even try to get ahead in what we might call the legally recognizable means, ie, education getting a job, getting promoted, etc. That's just the bare bones summary. And it's not something you can solve by increasing welfare payments and more public housing.

Well during that 'year of the gun' Macleans magazines stated virtually all the gun deaths were the result of Jamaican gangs. So maybe if we'd practiced a little immigration reform we wouldn't have had little girls being shot outside Eatons.

God? Personally, I don't know of any unbiased sources. Care to share?

Really? What data? Did you also ignore that cite from Statistics Canada I posted because you suspect their ideological biases? I don't think you can legitimately call data biased after stating you refused to read it. In order to try and encourage slightly younger immigrants, yes, but in the report you refused to read they discussed this very thing, and dismissed it, as did the Rand Corporation whose quote you also decided to ignore. Unless truly massive numbers of immigrants are brought in, more than double the current rate, immigration will not substantially alter the aging of the population.

And how many organizations do you rate as trustworthy? Even government reports have been known to reflect the political and ideological tilt of the minister. I regard the Fraser Institute as relatively trustworthy because, in part, they have established a reputation for being so, and that reputation would be damaged if they lied about easily verifiable figures.

So the families which had incomes of a million a year saw their incomes rise nicely. Those whose incomes was about $40k - eh, not so much.

Then maybe people should vote for people who can accurately judge what they can afford. Because it seems a lot of governments are running up huge deficits - very little of which has anything to do with public service wage and benefits. So you're saying employees of the state cannot rely on the state having any idea what it can afford? So who should they negotiate with? Or should employees of the state just work for whatever the state feels like paying them? But what if the state still doesn't understand what it can afford and runs into a deficit? Should the employees then slit their wrists, or what? I'm trying to understand what you think state employees ought to do. Which goes back to my question - should the public service employer only offer its employees really crappy wages and no benefits?

Well, some of us are in unions. And some of us care about the well-being of our society. And then some of us are brainwashed into believing that anything that is good for business is good for ordinary people.

By anyone who has presented any actual evidence to that effect? The accusation in this regard came from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, did it not? They are essentially, the left wing counterpart to the Fraser Institute, and to my uncertain knowledge their reports have almost invariably disagreed with almost everything every conservative and centrist economic organization has ever written, as well as the budgetary figures for both Liberal and Conservative governments. I take anything the CCPA says with a very healthy grain of salt, but I'll at least listen to it. When it comes to economic studies there are all kinds of interpretations of data.

Really? What you have you read from them then? I'm interested in knowing since I like to constantly update my understanding of biases. And by the way, in my opinion the definition of ideological bias is anyone who says "I don't read anything those people publish". And by the way, you haven't produced a shred of evidence that immigration is in any way helpful to Canada economically. No one has.

Because... they've been found to have produced false statistics previously? They've been found to have doctored studies? You don't like what you perceive to be their political views? In other words, do you have any legitimate reason for such a bald statement? I read all evidence presented. I don't care if it's from the Toronto Star, which some sneer at, or the Toronto Sun, which some sneer at. I think the mature thing to do is examine the statements and look for logic and supporting evidence. To say "I don't read anything those people say" is to espouse an extreme ideological tilt that makes it impossible to even discuss political issues with anyone not your particular ideological tilt.

I would suggest you also read chapters 7-10 in the Fraser Report. A study by the RAND Corporation (Grant et al., 2004), for example, looked at the demographic consequences of low fertility in Europe and reached conclusions broadly similar to ours on the question of whether immigration could compensate for the demographic challenges faced by EU nations. Schertmann (1992) shows that a constant inflow of immigrants, even relatively young ones, does not necessarily rejuvenate low fertility populations, and may in the long term actually contribute to population aging. Specific studies on Canada (United Nations, 2004; Denton and Spencer, 2004; Guillemette and Robson, 2006) have found that the dynamic of aging among the resident population is so strong that immigration’s ability to affect it is remarkably small. Fraser Report on Aging and immigration

Here is a place to start. A long paper on the economics of immigration by the Fraser Institute. In a chapter about recent immigration and Canadian living standards, Grubel stresses that official statistics show that recent immigrants on average earn substantially lower incomes than native-born Canadians, so that the system provides them with subsidies through taxes paid by high-income earners. Grubel estimates that immigrants who arrived in the 12 years before 2002 imposed a fiscal burden of $18.5 billion on all Canadians in the year 2002 alone. Fraser Institute report on immigration Also. Growth accounting is a commonly used approach for estimating the impact on productivity of various factors such as education and the age and sex of those who make up the labor force. It involves using earnings weights to distinguish the effects of the various factors. When applied over the period from 1990 to 2004, it suggests that immigration has lowered productivity by around 1.5% or 0.15% per year (Grady, 2006). While this is not very large, it is still significant and runs counter to the claims usually made regarding the productivity-enhancing effect of immigration. There's a lot of stuff there and I'm still looking through it. There's also this. The overall economic performance of immigrants has declined irrespective of whether they have come in under the “skilled immigrant” provisions or under the “family class” provisions of the Immigration Act. Poverty is a much more prevalent attribute of recent immigrants than it was among immigrants in the past, and recent immigrants are much less likely to achieve the levels of earned income of either their predecessors or the native-born population. Martin Collacott also finds that social stresses and “ghettoization” associated with the inability to speak either of the official languages is a serious problem, as are criminal activities in some communities. This paper reviews the increase in the earnings gap between immigrants and Canadian-born over the past two decades, and the current explanations of this labour market deterioration among recent immigrants in particular. The paper also outlines the rising gap in low-income rates between immigrants and non-immigrants. Like previous research, the paper concludes that the earnings gap at entry has increased for immigrants entering Canada during the 1990s, as compared to those of the 1970s. Furthermore, the gap in the low-income rate has been increasing. Statistics Canada The argument for immigrants to address our aging population is a long one, and you will find it in chapters 7 through 10 of the Fraser report, but to summarize In the pages that follow, we quantify those effects and draw some conclusions about the relative merits of changes in immigration flows as ways to address these challenges. Our key conclusions are that the increases in immigration necessary to offset or even significantly reduce the effects of past declines in birth rates on the growth and age structure of Canada’s workforce are unrealistic.

I do use my head. Which is why I asked for evidence. Unfortunately, you failed to deliver. Note. I did NOT ask for evidence that we had an aging population. I asked for evidence of the economic benefit of immigration. As to an aging population, the average age of immigrants is roughly the same as the average age of Canadians - a matter of bringing over all those parents and grandparents - so that isn't really going to help us much. Also, your attitude is disrespectful bordering on insulting. Modify it or you can talk to yourself.

We're talking about the immigrant vote, not the general vote. As for Toronto being very liberal, yes it is. On the other hand, most immigrants vote, like most Canadians, for mainly economic reasons, and for how friendly they perceive a party is to their group and immigration. Also, there's a huge homosexual population in Toronto.

But only since Martin has it been openly advocating policies which go against the fundamental beliefs of religious people, notably on gay issues. Most of its 'liberal' policies were seen as beneficial to ethnic and visible minorities

But none of them seem to be blowing people up.

And then they'd sign another contract with the same provisions, and then declare bankruptcy again? Cite? Cite? Maybe it would be enough if the state, ie, the employer who signed the agreements, had contributed their mandated share. Wait, you said none of them contributed anything. Which is it? How much do they contribute? And how does that compare to other large organizations? So you're saying that the state should not offer its employees the kinds of benefits other large organizations do? That, in effect, they should be the poorest paying jobs around so that only the least qualified, most desperate workers will ever work for the state? Is that who you want teaching kids? And yes, the difference between a private sector employer and a public sector employer is the public sector employer sometimes makes irresponsible agreements. But that's a reason to fire those politicians, not abrogate the agreements.

Aside. I was eating breakfast by the TV this morning, and flicking through the all-news stations. Those would be CBC, CTV, BBC, CNN, CNN headline, MSNBC, and FOX. All but FOX led off with the ongoing drama in Libya, and stayed on the story for several minutes. Fox led off with Wisconsin, and stayed on it, virtually without pause. Around the four minute mark CNN and MSNBC did a brief piece on Wisconsin, and around that time FOX did a very brief piece on Libya, but mostly on how it was affecting oil prices, and how those nice oil companies were working hard to make sure their workers in Libya were safe, and then how awful it was that Obama hadn't okayed drilling in national parks. Then they went back to Wisconsin again. Various talking heads seemed to be in a state of wonderment that all those unionists (said with the same tone you would say pedophile) hadn't already been locked up or something. There was much fixation on trying to punish those who had booked off sick, and on police actions to catch these 'AWOL' senators. You start to get a picture, while watching this, of what is affecting the mentality of some of the anti-union people on this thread.

I don't share America's adolescent obsession with other people's sex lives.

When in history, in any country, did a 'free market' result in the best possible conditions for workers? Anywhere? Government intervention is a relatively new concern. There was far less fifty years back, and far less than that fifty years earlier, etc. etc. My knowledge of history might be imperfect but I don't recall reading about any paradise for workers in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, or the early twentieth century either. As state intervention has grown, however, worker protection and treatment has also grown. Do you have an explanation for this?

Like in Dickens' time?

Property taxes are municipal, right? So mostly, what municipalities pay for are police, fire department, garbage collection, water treatment, schools, etc. These all require actual human beings to do the jobs, right? By the way, do you have a cite?