Official Canadian Federal Election Thread - May, 2011

u didn't even read my post did you? all i was saying is gov't planning does not work well. never mentioned anyuthing about he NDP being communist or anything about a dictatorship. not sure where that came from?

MORE MONEY MORE MONEY thats all you NDP's say. You have nothing to say about where the money comees from just that we need more of it. that's where u fail. You want us to be like Euro countries which shows you have no idea how either of these systems work. ur the one who needs schooling.

No. I'm saying that making Canada competitive so that companies from China, the EU, Japan, the US and elsewhere want to do business here results in those activities being taxed. Because of tax cuts under the Cons we have a very competitive corporate tax rate, and the ability to deduct interest on money borrowed for business expenses spurs a lot of debt financing in this country. Screwing with that stops business from wanting to set up shop here and, worse yet, drives business that is already here to other, more business friendly places. And there are plenty competing with us.

Reducing compliance costs and bureaucracy (which is essentially a tax, from business's perspective, except that it doesn't do anything for the country aside from create meaningless work for government employees) is another good way to encourage businesses to come here - which is a problem for the NDP in that in an effort to look like they're doing something about the environment would implement complicated compliance measures that inevitably have very little noticeable effect but always cost businesses a lot just to understand, much less comply with. If you pay $200,000 in taxes, and have to spend another $50,000 to deal with regulations, you're no better off than if you'd paid the whole $250,000 in tax. Except we're worse off because we didn't get to put that $50k into health care and education, AND we had to spend a part of the $200k to pay the salaries of the people overseeing the regulations instead of putting THAT into health care and education.

Being employer-side friendly to at least some reasonable degree is another way to create a business friendly environment, and that in particular is a big problem with the NDP in that they're the party of unions everywhere. Try convincing someone to set up a business where "you spent 3 hours a day every day for a month looking at porn in your office" is not a good enough reason to fire someone for cause. I shit you not, that is the case. Canada already sucks in this respect compared to other countries and obviously if the unions had their way it would be even more worker friendly.

Growth of the business environment expands the tax base because there are simply more companies within our borders to earn income which can be taxed. This also employs people, who then have more money themselves to go out and spend on things like tourism, household appliances and other things, which are provided by resorts or hotels or sold by stores. Those sales in turn are also taxed and which allows those stores and resorts and hotels to further expand thereby providing more jobs and...

... so yeah, do you have a basic, high level sense of how the economy works now?

And if the supermarket then is forced to pay extra transportation costs to get products grown in Canada onto its shelves in order to fulfil a meaningless quota, and thereby loses significant revenue? If Canadian suppliers can't meet the increased demand, meaning supermarkets just have to carry fewer apples overall, change their stocking strategy and reduce the number of locations with a produce section, thereby actually hurting Canadian farmers who suddenly have a smaller market of purchasers? At a macro level when protectionism in a particular industry injures trade relations generally with important partners (see: softwood lumber)? When domestic grape producers either protest, leading to a magnification of these problems across the entire agricultural sector when government is forced to apply similar quotas to other products? When these quotas influence the market by promoting apple growth, shifting agriculture away from certain types of products and towards others? 

Your simple little idea could prove disastrous in a whole bunch of different ways I can think of off the top of my head and probably ten times as many I CAN'T think of. Screwing around with that kind of stuff yields results that no one ever predicts, and they always seem to end up being really bad.

Yes, because that's EXACTLY how you should run a country! "Hey let's do some shit! We're not sure whether the result will be good or bad. Granted, it will probably be disastrous, but if we somehow by fluke chance land on the formula for the magic potion, it'll work AMAZINGLY! At least until circumstances change, as they inevitably will in a system with a million variables, after which point it won't work very well anymore."

Dang, someone should elect you PM on this new platform of "let's just try stuff and see how it goes."

Many of the million factors involved are particular to time or location. What works during your pilot project in may, 2011 in Kelowna probably won't in Gatineau, 2014. Much less Munich. But yes, pilot projects are great, and you can try any number of policies out to see if they might work, incrementally. However, the underlying point of "oh I know let's just make it so that half the produce in our supermarkets has to come from inside our borders, that's simple" is not REMOTELY simple and is very likely to cause a lot more harm than good, as are most such ideas where the government attempts to regulate the way business is conducted.

This.

Not to mention everyone you just mentioned can vote. I find it kind of disturbing that people like Paul Bernardo have the same say in how our government and judicial system is run as I do. It wasn't that long ago that people serving more than a 2 year sentence did not have the right to vote. Once the election buzz cools don't im going to call my conservative MP to see if they would be interested in reinstating this. All their going to do is vote for the NDP since they're probably the softest on crime in hopes of getting out sooner. I mean I see the arguement against what I'm saying, but I'm just uncomfortable with the fact they vote. There are MANY places in the world who don't let them. Its not a radical idea. Even if they denied people serving 5 years or more it would be better than nothing.

Inb4 omgz if dey t4ke away ther wr1te 2 v0te where does it end?!?!?!?!

... no. no no no. that's exaclty what every lefty thinks... just make everyone buy Canada!! economy solved!

The Charter doesn't apply to those incarcerated. If it did they would be free to leave.

Ex. Freedom to move from province to province. Prisoners do not have this right... clearly. When you go to jail you give up rights and freedoms. I thought everyone knew that.

This is a joke right

Oh God please tell me this is a joke

I was more concerned with the statement that the charter didn't apply to prisoners... well, in that case, what the hell would that "cruel and unusual punishment" thing be about??

I'm saying prisoners arn't protected by the same rights as the rest of us. You sacrafice some liberty when you go to jail.

trade does help us you dumb dumb... you can't just ignore that fact.

per year ofcoarse.

Gotta love the public sector.

Did you actually just advocate for a 2 party system??? LOL.... There is so much shit wrong with that, but I'm not going to rant.

On a seperate note, if your lefty parties didn't want a Harper majority, why did you call the election? hahaha Its ok when the liberals get a majority with 40% of the vote but when a right of center party does its undemocratic. Everyone needs to hide there babies and puppies asap because when parliment resumes the conservative storm troopers are going to be coming after everyone who didnt vote for them. lulz

Our system is f'd in the a, I agree. Everyone knows that though, but we're still better than the states. That 2 party system is hyper-partisan. As soon as you win the presidency house and senate a bitch load of ultra partisan legislation gets jammed through. The only time it comes close to working is when the house and senate are different parties or the prez is different from both which is pretty rare.

btw no one has talked about how conservative this senate is going to be in 4 years. After a total of 9 years with Harper as PM its going to be like 80% conservative haha. i hope we can just get rid of the thing.