Canada's economic future

[M.Dancer]

So, a $400K home will appreciate in price only $32K per year, rather than $52K.

Tell me, when the homeowners want to sell their $500K-$600K home in a few years, who's going to be able to afford it???

The people who have been short selling the sub prime structered products?

$400K homes around here aren't so rare. The average home price in Toronto is about $360,000. The people who are buying those don't have incomes dependant on securities.

During the "correction" in the late 80s, it wasn't the avergage how that took a beating, but overpriced homes and homes on the high end scale. New luxury townhome condos near Casa Loma went from an asking price of near a million to 750,000 in a year. Mind you, those same Townhomes are going for near 2 million today.

[Pat Coghlan]

$400K homes around here aren't so rare. The average home price in Toronto is about $360,000. The people who are buying those don't have incomes dependant on securities.

During the "correction" in the late 80s, it wasn't the avergage how that took a beating, but overpriced homes and homes on the high end scale. New luxury townhome condos near Casa Loma went from an asking price of near a million to 750,000 in a year. Mind you, those same Townhomes are going for near 2 million today.

It's true that dual-income families have raised the price of an "average" home to $300K+, but in the 80's there were still lots of boomers coming into the market. I don't think that's true today, given that the youngest boomers are 33+.

Under normal circumstances, $300K+ home prices are affordable for families with a $100K+ combined income, but I don't think there are enough of them entering the workforce these days to sustain these price levels.

[Quebec Exposed]

Let me explain the problem with Canada's productivity.

First, Quebec has one of the largest population bases in Canada, second only to Ontario. It should be highly productive, yet, during the most two productive months of the summer Quebec's entire labour work force takes two weeks' summer vacation, and all at the same time. During this time literally millions of dollars of rented equipment sits idle on the construction sites. That is an example of extremely poor productivity. Yet, next year Quebec will come calling to English Canada with its hands out demanding billions of dollars more in equalization payments to support its unproductive economy and its outrageous unaffordable social programs. That is yet another example of an unproductive nation. The feds should tell Quebec to take a hike until it gets its affairs in order.

Now, for more examples of an unproductive Canada...I have travelled and lived and worked in many nations. Almost every country I have been to, including the USA, has mail delivery on Saturday. The construction workers work on Saturday, especially during those all important summer months in the north of the USA during the summer. What about Canada???? Need I respond.

The Canadian, especially Ontario teachers, are the highest paid teachers in the world. Yet they work the fewest hours in the industrialized world. I know because I am one and I am working here right now in the USA. I would never work in Ontario with Ontario's spoiled overpayed UNPRODUCTIVE teachers. I make only 2/3 of what an Ontario teacher makes and I work many more hours than they do. I have to supervise buses, lunches, recesses, etc with my students.

Are these enough examples of an unproductive Canada or do you need more?

First and foremost, I would cut Quebec off financially. That would go a long way to solving the problem in Canada, because Quebec, the welfare state, is milking Canada dry. But do we have any federal politicians with the guts to cut Quebec off? Nope, because Quebecor controls much of Ontario's small town press (largest voting base) and Quebecers hold most of Canada's key government jobs in Ottawa. The best thing Canadians can hope for is to give someone outside Quebec a federal majority and some clout. Harper has to pander to Quebec every day of the week. Maybe, if given a majority by English Canada, he might do something else rather than rely on the Bloc to prop up his government. And as for Dion...I'm not even going to talk about that citizen of Quebec and France.

So, to conclude, getting Quebec under control will help solve the productivity problem in Canada. Getting some of the unproductive labour force, such as Ontario's teachers, would also help. But Quebec is by far the biggest problem.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

We need to think very carefully about productivity. I say this because we are now attempting to compete in global markets where some employees are paid a daily rate which is less than the minimum hourly rate in Canada. Thanks to the WTO consumers benefit from this new global market place, unfortunately workers in Canada cannot compete with those of developing nations. Thus the picture becomes very complicated.

In order for us to actually prosper there is only one path to undertake and that is one of automation, which then means retraining our workforce to become technicians and transport workers. We will have to design and build equipment that can utilize our raw materials to create value added products and then ship them to end users. This means a leap in technological development in Canada.

If there is another way to go I am not aware of it, because automation is our only hope of reducing the net cost of production by enough to be able to compete with third world labour costs.

[Pat Coghlan]

We need to think very carefully about productivity. I say this because we are now attempting to compete in global markets where some employees are paid a daily rate which is less than the minimum hourly rate in Canada. Thanks to the WTO consumers benefit from this new global market place, unfortunately workers in Canada cannot compete with those of developing nations. Thus the picture becomes very complicated.

In order for us to actually prosper there is only one path to undertake and that is one of automation, which then means retraining our workforce to become technicians and transport workers. We will have to design and build equipment that can utilize our raw materials to create value added products and then ship them to end users. This means a leap in technological development in Canada.

If there is another way to go I am not aware of it, because automation is our only hope of reducing the net cost of production by enough to be able to compete with third world labour costs.

How do you compete with a country like India which, despite all the stories about their increasing prosperity, still has over 800M people earning less than $1/day?

[Jerry J. Fortin]

You need to design and build automated production facilities. In fact you will find that in time even the construction of those production facilities will be automated. Robotics is our answer to production expenses, we can undercut the competition with using machines instead of people. It will turn us into a nation of civil engineers and service technicians to build and service equipment. That equipment will become more and more advanced and produce more consumable goods as it evolves. We can compete by working smarter not harder.

[jbg]

How do you compete with a country like India which, despite all the stories about their increasing prosperity, still has over 800M people earning less than $1/day?

T he US and Canada have always prospered by being on the cutting edge, rarely directly from manufacturing.

[Pat Coghlan]

T he US and Canada have always prospered by being on the cutting edge, rarely directly from manufacturing.

You mean innovation.

To innovate, you need engineers and scientists. How many of these are finding jobs these days?

[Pat Coghlan]

This article echoes what I've been saying:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/for...sion=2007090505