Vive Le Canada

Latest On The Tory Free Trade Review Farce And The Census

Posted on Monday, November 03 at 12:36 by sthompson
If you can believe it, McKay and Tory M.P. Casey decided that the truncated hearings were to be held IN CAMERA, no press allowed. Hilarious! Originally there was a promise that the panel's report would go to a Tory policy conference. So much for that. As anticipated, the few (very few) witnesses last Thursday morning were stacked with "free trade is great" Mulroney supporters. Did anyone REALLY expect otherwise? Now let's turn to the census fiasco. Many of you will have received copies of Bill Blaikie's questions and comments in the House, or seen them on www.vivelecanada.ca. A couple of points need to be emphasized. It's true that NAFTA made it necessary to open up the RFP to American firms, as Rock, Fellegi et al keep pointing out, BUT there was no necessity for a RFP in the first place!!! As I indicated previously, Statistics Canada should be developing the technology, the methodology, the implementation THEMSELVES. Give the many millions of dollars they have agreed to pay Lockheed Martin, there is ZERO reason why they could not have done so using good, talented Candian experts. Note the egregious repeated explanation (this time by yet another cabinet minister), that Lockheed Martin is a Canadian company!!! Vive has sent over 2,000 letters to Rock, Chretien and Fellegi re the census. Visit vive and add your name if you haven't already. Vive has had an amazing 50,000 plus hits in October, a spectacular figure for such a new site. In Paul Hellyer's ONE BIG PARTY there's a telling quote. In his first newsletter following the PC convention and later repeated in a speech on June 19th, MacKay said "Let me make myself completely clear on this point. I completely and unequivocally support NAFTA and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement...We created these agreements. It will remain our policy bedrock...the crown jewel." Can't be much clearer than that, can it? Unless of course you wanted to improve the English. Mel Comments on the above message should be directed to mhurtig@telusplanet.net

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  1. by N Say
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 1:22 am
    I\'m sure this will be in every newspaper in the next few days.... lol

    ---
    "So many right-wing christians, so few lions." - t-shirt I saw @ school

  2. by sthompson
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 2:07 am
    Yeah, we did scoop a few papers the last time Mel sent us something :)

  3. by N Say
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 2:26 am
    I was being sarcastic, but I forgot about that!

    ---
    "So many right-wing christians, so few lions." - t-shirt I saw @ school

  4. by Anonymous
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 3:04 am
    Oh let us not underestimate the power of Mr. Hurtig, thank goodness he\'s on our side!

  5. by N Say
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 5:23 am
    Yeah but THEY have Mulroney, big money & the media on their side! Can anyone say Gandalf vs Sauron?? lololol Actually maybe I\'m giving Mulroney too much credit, at least Sauron didn\'t willingly hand over his country without even being asked to.

    ---
    "So many right-wing christians, so few lions." - t-shirt I saw @ school

  6. by Anonymous
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 7:58 am
    I thought this was a serious site, you must be kidding, THEY have Mulroney! ha ha ha that is great. They have the greatest trader ever, good for them, the jewel in the crown author of the FREE TRADE, sell out. The only thing better would be if they had Klein, then Alberta would be spared and so would Canada, cause nobody west of Alberta would vote for the new party. Which if they do is just the same as voting liberal! I say good, the entire thing is nothing but a farce, they probably have the leader picked out and waiting just like Martin. No there is no democracy in these parties, let us hope the NDP has something better to offer. These days it would appear they are the only ones working on truly Canadian issues, like the high interest rates on credit cards, or the census going south. The other two/three parties are playing corporate charades!

  7. by avatar Dr Caleb
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 7:21 pm
    Of course the NDP have a much better plan! They'll drop all taxes for middle class and lower income people, tax the rich and increase corporate taxes and put it all into health care and homeless shelters. That way everything will be priced much higher to cover the increased tax to business so that people will need the tax break to cover the cost of milk and the $2.00 per litre for gasoline. Or better yet! They can freeze prices so people can afford things, and we'll just import everything from the US because all of the companies will have left Canada for the US anyhow. And Canada can finally be that welfare state it always admired Norway and Sweden for being.<p> Power to the Workers, Comrade!<p> What? You people have never heard sarcasm before?<p><p>---<br>"History does nor repeat itself, but it does rhyme" Mark Twain

  8. by Anonymous
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 7:40 pm
    Nobody ever suggested dropping taxes for the lower class. They talk about taxing more fairly. Tax \"Cuts\" benefit the wealthiest corporations, and amount to tax \"Subsidies.\" If a business wants to move to the States and pay $2000 a worker for health care, that\'s THEIR STUPIDITY! We have a tremendous competitive advantage with our living standards, cheap hydro, water, and so forth. Privatizing with actually HURT our advantage, by raising to cost of these essential services to allow for a \"Profit\" margin.

    A good example is Paul Martin GIVING business, mostly big business -100 billion dollar tax subsidies. Imgaine, Dr. Caleb, 100 billion dollars spent in Canada. That\'s like 1 trillion in the US! Investing that money in infrastructure like subways, freight train routes and social spending would actually, in the long run -improve the society and create more profit-making opportunities, as people would be healthier and wealthier, and there would be less gridlock, which DOES impair business.

    P.S. -Another side note is municipal taxes in Toronto, where I live. I live in an apartment, and I can tell you that tenants are not taxed fairly at all. Why? Every tenant in the city has our unfair local taxes built into our rents. People in apartments pay 4 TIMES (!!!) THE TAX RATE OF PEOPLE IN HOUSES! That means if my family bought a 3200 square foot house, we\'d be paying the same in tax as we do now in our measely, 800 square foot apartment. Talk about discrimination.

  9. by Anonymous
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 7:43 pm
    Exactly!!! Why would we want Sweden\'s low-unemployment, low poverty and low crime-rate?! It\'s a horrible place. Mats Sundin and Markus Naslund are phony, capitalsits at heart when they praise Sweden.


    And you\'ve never heard of sarcasm before?!!


    Let\'s vote for Canada\'s Stalin!

  10. by avatar Dr Caleb
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 10:15 pm
    Tax cuts or raises do not affect corporations. If it's a tax hike, prices go up and the consumer pays. If it's a drop, prices do not drop, but profits go up. See: Oil & Gas industry.<p> Yes, 100 billion would be nice! But start at the top. Cut government waste first! I can think of 15 billion the governemnt wasted over the last 5 years.<p> I used to work in provincial government. I would watch them spend whatever was left in their budget in the final month of the year, just so the budget would be the same next year. They'd blow it on new office chairs, computers, whatever so long as the money was spent. If I were approving their next years spending, I'd drop the amount they spent that month off their allotment first. They went 11 months without it, they can go the whole next year without it.<p> Sucks about your taxes though. Come west young man! You can get a new 3200 sq ft home for under <a href='http://www.welist.com/edmonton/edmain.html'>$175,000</a>, and less than $1500.00 a year in taxes!<p><p>---<br>"History does nor repeat itself, but it does rhyme" Mark Twain

  11. by avatar Dr Caleb
    Tue Nov 04, 2003 10:19 pm
    You're right, it sounds horrible. Must be why the suicide rates are much lower than that of Canada. Oh, wait...<p><p>---<br>"History does nor repeat itself, but it does rhyme" Mark Twain

  12. by Anonymous
    Wed Nov 05, 2003 4:17 am
    I don\'t know anything about their suicide rates. Ours are pretty high, too, but amybe your right. Who knows? Not me....they do have very low murder rates, though.

  13. by Anonymous
    Sun Nov 09, 2003 1:44 am
    I think we\'re both right. There IS waste in givernment. I\'m not convinced cutting waste is enough, and it can go too dar, but there IS waste in government. That being said, spending money on chairs and computers in a limited manner is necessary......but I\'d rather the money going towards social programs or reducing the debt.

    As for real-estate, your right. I personally know a couple of people my age (I\'m young) that are going to either Calgary or Edmonton just to RENT a cheaper apartment. As for houses, it\'s funny you should mention that. Although there is a market for them, the bloated housing market in Toronto means that, if you want a house in the Greater Toronto Area, anything under 400,000 dollars is either a dump, very small, or being sold by a distressed seller. It\'s pretty laughable. 400,000 gets you nothing special at all.

    P.S. -on an unrelated note, Dr. Caleb, because you are intelligent and web saavy: I found a site mentioned in a local free newspaper called Google Watch, at:

    www.google-watch.org. The site talks about Google\'s ridiculously long cookies, and horrific privacy polcies, causing havoc on the web they so horribly monopolize.

    The site also tells of how a blogger tricked Google into crawling a spoof google-search results page. To find it, do this:

    Go to google.ca, and type in French military victories. DO NOT hit search. (You\'ll get 61,000 hits.) Instead, hit the \"I\'m feeling lucky\" option, which takes you automatically to the first website crawled. There, you should find a spoof search results page, which is recognized 30+ times, a big no-no for Google. The page should say: \"Did you mean French military defeats?\"

    It\'s pretty funny.

  14. by avatar Dr Caleb
    Mon Nov 10, 2003 4:45 pm
    That was pretty funny! Thanks! I needed a laugh on a Monday!


    ---
    "History does nor repeat itself, but it does rhyme" Mark Twain



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