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Post by phil on Dec 8, 2006 8:43:37 GMT -5
That's why the Conforms must not have a majority government
and why I'm so mad at the Liberals for just giving them the "leadership"
for at least another election ...
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Post by Dr. Drum on Dec 8, 2006 9:23:38 GMT -5
None of the Liberal leadership candidates would have removed the advantages of incumbency from Harper, but I actually think Dion can win the next election. His election removes the 'Liberal corruption' stick from the Con's arsenal and right now, at least, he plays well with Liberal/NDP swing voters. That alone could make the difference – you only need a dozen seats to flip from from the Cons to the Liberals and Harper's out.
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Post by phil on Dec 8, 2006 12:49:17 GMT -5
But I don't think he'll get enough MPs elected
to get a majority government ... !
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Post by phil on Dec 9, 2006 16:09:51 GMT -5
Words Fail Them
By JEAN-BENOIT NADEAU and JULIE BARLOW
Published: December 9, 2006
Montreal
STEPHEN HARPER, the prime minister of Canada, stunned the country last month when he proposed a resolution recognizing that the seven million “Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.” Anyone who has traveled to Montreal or Quebec City will recognize that Mr. Harper was merely stating the obvious, at least where the term “nation” is concerned. But for Canadians, Mr. Harper’s words reopened a long, tortured debate over national identity, and recast it in stronger terms than ever.
The background to his declaration is, of course, Quebec’s secessionist movement — strong enough to have monopolized Canadian politics for the last 50 years, but not quite strong enough to actually win a referendum on independence. The struggle has largely been a war of words.
Since the 1940s, Canadians have been looking for the right word — some say formula — to answer the question: “What does Quebec want?” For the last 20 years, the thinking has been to give Quebec some kind of recognition.
In 1990, many believed the Meech Lake accord held the answer to this riddle. Promising constitutional protection for Quebec’s efforts to preserve its French language and culture, the accord was an attempt to re-integrate Quebec into the constitutional family (although Canada’s Constitution was repatriated from Britain in 1982, making Canada a fully independent country, Quebec has still not signed it). The accord, however, got stuck when a debate started over the significance of two words, “distinct society,” a phrase intended to satisfy Quebecers’ desire for recognition without alienating everyone else.
When a significant segment of the Canadian population disapproved of the accord, arguing that it gave French Canadians too much power, some provincial governments refused to ratify it, and Canada nearly broke up. In 1995, the separatist Parti Québécois, which controlled Quebec at the time, came up with its own solution: a provincial referendum on separation based on perhaps the wordiest — and most ambiguous — question ever formulated. Separatists lost the vote by only a narrow margin.
In 2000, the national Liberal government rebounded with the Clarity Act, which it thought was a foolproof formula to prevent separatists from taking advantage of an ambiguously worded question to win an independence referendum.
But now, Stephen Harper has created new ambiguity in the question — all the more interesting since he probably thought he was clarifying things. And he was so hasty in pulling this rabbit out of his hat that he didn’t even consult his minister of intergovernmental affairs, who later resigned over the issue. Yet Parliament voted resoundingly in favor of his resolution.
This suddenness had a lot more to do with political maneuvering than an awakening to Quebec’s aspirations for statehood. Mr. Harper, a Conservative, saw a good opportunity to steal some thunder from the separatist parties and to increase his popularity in Quebec — much reduced by his opposition to same-sex marriage, his refusal to respect the Kyoto accord and his support for Israel during the war in Lebanon last summer.
Since the “nation” declaration, politicians and columnists have been dissecting and debating the word, and they probably will for decades to come, since French Canadians tend to see Canada as a country made up of two nations, while the English tend to think that “country” and “nation” are one and the same. Mr. Harper used the French term Québécois rather than Quebecer in the English version of the resolution, and everyone is puzzled by the choice and hesitant about its possible implications.
Some critics wonder if the federal government has unwittingly created a new ethnic category. Others point out that if the Scots or the Catalans can be called a nation within Britain or Spain, why not the people of Quebec?
Meanwhile, the Quebec government, led by the very federalist (that is, anti-separatist) Jean Charest, maintains that the territory of Quebec (not Quebecers) constitutes a nation, thereby refusing to associate “nation” with ethnicity. Tribunals, politicians and voters will be called on many times to answer these questions.
Nonetheless, as people living in Quebec, we feel that Mr. Harper has come up with a promising formulation. Most people in Quebec, apart from hard-line separatists, will probably be satisfied by the word nation.
And English Canadians ought to be, too, despite their resistance to the idea that Canada has two founding cultures. The problem is, ever since 1990 English Canadians have been traumatized by the failed attempts to make the Constitution acceptable to Quebec, so they are hesitating, as polls show.
Stephen Harper has created either a new basis for talks about Quebec’s status or contributed a new weapon to a nastier debate. No one has quite figured out which it will be.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow are the authors of “The Story of French.”
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Post by Dr. Drum on Dec 10, 2006 8:22:52 GMT -5
You know, I’m starting to wonder whether there isn’t a lot of truth to the argument that this country works quite well in practice, but will never be made to work in 'theory'.
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Post by phil on Dec 10, 2006 9:39:32 GMT -5
Welcome to the club ... !!
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Post by phil on Jan 3, 2007 11:05:31 GMT -5
CEOs Earn Average Canadian's Salary In One Day: Study
Tuesday January 2, 2007
Crime may not pay, but being an executive in Canada certainly appears to.
By the time the average Canadian pulls it together and drags their hungover body to work on January 2nd, the country's highest-paid CEOs will have already earned more for the year than their annual salary.
The same goes for minimum-wage workers, except the people upstairs will have their annual $15,931 by the time the former gets out of bed.
According to a study released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the 100 highest-paid private-sector executives will have pocketed $38,010 by 9:46 a.m. Tuesday.
Such news is hardly an inspiration for the many Canadians who head back to work in early January with the primary goal of starting to dig their way out of holiday debt.
"When you say that the average CEO made $9 million in 2005 and the average Canadian made ($38,000), the comparison between those things is so far into the stratosphere that I think people have trouble just coming to terms with what the comparison means," said Hugh Mackenzie, an economist with the independent research institute that focuses on issues of social and economic justice.
"Converting it into time sort of puts it into a frame that people can get their heads around."
The figures were put together based on 2005 salary figures from Statistics Canada, as well as Report on Business magazine's recent listing of the 100 best-paid CEOs of Canadian publicly traded companies.
According to his figures, by the time Canadians punch out from work around 5 p.m. Tuesday, the average CEO will have pocketed a staggering $70,000.
"I was kind of hoping it would get into the second week of January. As it turns out, it was not even close," Mackenzie quipped. "Once people get over how stunning the differentials are, I think it really raises a lot of questions in people's minds."
"How can somebody possibly be worth that amount in income and ... if those people are taking that much money out of the company or out of the economy, what does that mean for what's left for the rest of us?"
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Post by Dr. Drum on Jan 11, 2007 11:36:55 GMT -5
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Post by phil on Jan 16, 2007 12:52:29 GMT -5
HÉ! You want "extreme pressure from the United States" ...
Take a look at this ...
It's a good thing I'm not a Royal Bank client !!
Royal Bank limiting accounts because of U.S. law
CBC News
The Royal Bank has refused to open American dollar accounts for people of certain nationalities since April 2006, Radio-Canada reported Monday.
Canadian citizens with dual citizenship in Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea or Myanmar are affected.
The bank didn't agree to an interview with Radio-Canada, but did confirm the report.
The Royal Bank is conforming with U.S. Treasury Department laws.
A spokesperson for the federal Finance Department said it was unaware of the practice, and that the bank could be liable for heavy fines.
Last week, Montreal's Bell Helicopter banned 24 employees from working on a U.S. military contract because of their nationalities.
The workers were taken off the lucrative contract to build 480 American military helicopters because they were born in countries that the Americans consider a security risk.
Security measures outlined in the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations do not allow citizens from 25 countries to work on strategic military weapons.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was "concerned" about the policy.
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Post by Kensterberg on Jan 16, 2007 12:58:43 GMT -5
So the US is trying to make Canadian banks play by our rules?
Something is rotten in this picture.
BTW, Phil did you realize that your next post will be your 7,000th here at Castaways? That puts you in some pretty elite company! ;D
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Post by rockysigman on Jan 16, 2007 13:01:34 GMT -5
Phil deleted his account once too, so he's probably actually way ahead of you, Ken.
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Post by Kensterberg on Jan 16, 2007 13:05:50 GMT -5
But is he ahead of ThoRn? That's the big question, innit?!
I need to take some time off so that you can pass me again, Rocky. I've been saying waaaaaaay too much here in the past year.
Maybe I'll move to the beach and get away from the internets ...
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Post by rockysigman on Jan 16, 2007 13:11:29 GMT -5
I think I've probably made up some big ground on you in the last few months actually. Since I moved to this slower department here at work, I've posted like crazy. And then a good amount from home too. Sort of sad.
If you moved to the beach, you'd be sure the beach was Wi-Fi ready and you know it.
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Post by Kensterberg on Jan 16, 2007 13:17:24 GMT -5
I think I've probably made up some big ground on you in the last few months actually. Since I moved to this slower department here at work, I've posted like crazy. And then a good amount from home too. Sort of sad. If you moved to the beach, you'd be sure the beach was Wi-Fi ready and you know it. What's really sad here is that he's right. |
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Post by phil on Jan 22, 2007 9:03:35 GMT -5
Monday, June 05, 2006
Oilsands Ouput to Triple
With oil prices remaining strong Canada's production will continue to rise. The National Energy Board is now forecasting the tripling of oil production from Alberta's oil sands by 2015, with massive impacts in store for climate and the Canadian environment.
With an estimated 180 billion barrels of recoverable crude, Canada is second only to Saudi Arabia in known reserves, and this is only the beginning. In total, Canada's reserves are closer to 1.7 trillion barrels in volume, with 180 billion barrels recoverable with current technology and market prices. If better technology becomes available, or commodity prices continue to rise, Canada may become the world's primary supplier of crude. However, the toll on the environment could be catastrophic.
According to the industry itself, each barrel recovered requires two to five barrels of water, carves up four tons of earth and uses enough natural gas to heat a home for between one and five days.
The resulting impact is a moonscape of open pit mines, polluted air and degraded water, with the physical scars of current projects clearly visible from space.
For a better perspective on the environmental costs of these projects visit google maps and search for "Fort McMurray, Alberta". In the satellite map you can clearly see the major developments just north of the city.
************
Forget the part about tripling the tar sands production !
The US and the Canadian government are now talking about
jacking up production 5 times up to 5 million barrels a day
all of it to be exported to the US ...
And they intend to go nuclear to help process that stuff ... !!
Anything to keep those SUVs on the road !!
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