The Last Exile

I will admit I wanted Canadian forces completely withdrawn from Afghanistan since 2006. I knew the conflict was ‘unwinnable’ unless the Canadian government made the decision to annex Afghanistan and treat the country as another province of Canada. I was relieved when the pull-out was announced but disturbed at the high number of ‘military’ trainers left behind after the officially pull-out. Every time I hear ‘military trainer’ my mind goes all Vietnamish and what a dog’s breakfast that war was.

A week ago the elected Prime Minister of Afghanistan announced that men were fundamental and women were secondary….so I am more than a little perturbed when I read Peter Mackay, as Canadian Minister of Defense, believes Canada must remain steadfast to its commitment of training Afghani troops until 2014…of course, what no one has actually asked MacKay; is if this valuable training we are providing to Afghanis troops will play a role in the continuing oppression of Afghani women.

My money says it will and we should get out now. Lending a military hand in the oppression of women and children are not promoting Canadian values.

According to this report, the Federal Government has decided to close all the Student Resources Centres located across the country in an effort to save the federal purse $6.5 Million. And why would a young person/student need help getting a job anyway….Besides, Lord knows, the conservatives need to find every penny after letting a certain Tory MP spend $50 million for Gazebos and other such nonsense.

The Globe and Mail Konrad Yakabuski writes an op-ed piece on the Occupy movement and reinforces the very point I attempted to make last week.

North Americans appear less concerned with overturning the current political and economic systems and more interested in making them more responsive to the plight of the middle class.

That could change. The outrage toward financial and political elites remains a palpable and broadly based sentiment in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. As long as the political elite on both continents fails to address this anger in meaningful enough ways, it is giving the middle class a reason to back one or the other of these protest movements.

For the middle class, the real irritant is the sense that average folk can no longer reasonably aspire to get ahead.

The dream of upward mobility – in essence, the social contract at the heart of democratic capitalism – has been shattered. The evidence turns up in two-tier wage structures in the auto sector and other industries; in rollbacks in pension and health benefits; and, among the jobless, in a proportion of long-term unemployed in the United States that surpasses Depression-era heights. This is an explosive recipe for unrest.

Bingo…and if the Occupy Wall Street movement can push the cranks and fringe to their natural home on outer political edges of just about everything; it has the ability to be a truly transformative movement ‘of and for’ the people – rather than of the crackpots. Of course, calling for this type of thing….will is never useful or even helpful.

I have been ignoring the Occupy Movement. I was interested, but then came the ‘blame the Jews’ meme – and I wrote it off. I have no desire to pay attention to another protest movement which uses Jews to scapegoat my country’s or even the world’s economy. It has been done before with horrific consequences. If there is one constant in over two thousand years of Jewish history it is this; first comes ‘blame the Jews’, and then comes the pogroms. And I have no desire to end up as anyone’s lamp shade. If the Occupy Movement wants to be a force for positive change; it needs to write-off the ‘fringe’ rather than attempt to take the ‘fringe’ element into the mainstream.

But there is something rotten, and the middle class and working poor of this country know it. I know it, my senior mother knows it, my daughter knows it, my neighbours know it, the people I ride the subway and the bus with know it. The people I work beside every day know it. But it is just not us, it has spread throughout the Western world and we all know it. We are not the fringe or the protest pimps who come and protest for whatever cause is the flavour of times.

The last provincial election, not a single party represented a coherent platform which I could cast my vote for without cringing. The political class has betrayed the very people who they are sworn to represent.

Instead, the political class lobbies and seeks multi-national corporate interests rather than national ones. The political class tells us we need to nurture and care for corporate interests; otherwise, the people’s needs will not be met. This is why China can buy Canadian granite, ship it all the way to China to grind, cut and polish it, pay again to ship it all the way back to Canada and be as competitive as local Ontario producers. This is way Canadian multi-national corporations can seek government bail-outs but have no qualms in laying off Canadian workers to outsource those same jobs to third world workers. I do not have an issue with the third world countries attempting to build an a stable and healthy economy – but I just want them to build and develop their own economies without dismantling mine. Self-sufficiency should be the goal rather than inter-dependence.

Globalization was suppose to make us all free and rich. Although, it has not worked out that way for most of us. I am not any richer and my wages face a constant erosion from the rising rates of taxes and the general cost of just about everything while the corporate tax rate continues to slide ever downward. I know for a fact; I am less free today than I was 30 years ago.

Canadians generally do not have any babies anymore; mostly because they cannot afford to when it takes a 2 person income just to raise a small family with ordinary expectations. We never really discuss that in this country, and if the topic does manage to come up in public dialogue, somehow the dominate ethos manages to give the impression that a woman who works outside the home rather than rising her children at home does so for selfish avaricious reasons rather than the fact that taxation, housing and transportation costs now claim a much larger percentage of family income than they did 30 years ago.

Let me put it to you another way. My best friend in high school was number 7 out of 13 children. Jim’s parents emigrated from Scotland. His father starting off working in a factory and eventually worked his way up as a supervisor but not until most of the children had grown. His parents bought a modest 2-storey 3 bedroom home and renovated it to accommodate the ‘ever’-growing family. Jim’s mother did not work outside the home. Restaurant meals, movies or even cable television were not in the cards but there always enough kids for pick-up games of baseball and hockey. Jim’s father had a car, a station wagon, and the boys all got jobs at a young age.

The thing is, I cannot imagine any man today, with only a grade 8 education, being able to buy his own home, a car and support 15 on his salary without government assistance. The times have changes and not for the better, but the sad part is, no one is asking why this is.

The Globe and Mail carries an article on the high cash balances large North American corporations are carrying on their books.

Am I surprised that the US and Canada are singled out as ‘high-cost manufacturing countries’? No, this is the price to be paid for having a standard of living which elevates most of the citizenry from living 12 to a room and having to dump a bucket down a public drain twice a day.

What is galling, is that these companies (especially the automakers), demanded our governments use public funds to help them stave off bankruptcy just a scant few years ago. GM is free to build their cars in whatever country they desire, but when you suck at the public teat, then be prepared to give back.

In GM’s case, the company is mooching off the taxpayers of Canada and the US. Time to end financing and corporate tax breaks for corporate welfare bums who cannot remember where their bread gets buttered. Frankly, the entire board and executive management of GM should be tarred, feathered and run out of North America.

For a long time I have been watching terrible economic decisions being made. Decisions, whereby ‘shareholder return’ trumps the needs of country. Contrary to what many might believe of me; I do not believe free market capitalist is always the answer or the sole answer. Those free market capitalists, far too often, put profit and net return before quality of human life.

As a conservative, I perhaps better understand than my progressive peers that ‘human nature’ remains unremarkably changed as its core – despite the best efforts of our modern social engineering experts. It is almost a 100 years since the Triangle Shirtwaist fire ravaged the garment of district of New York City. This was the face, and consequence, of unfettered capitalism in action.

I doubt you could find a Canadian which would willing return to those days with its lack of labour and safety laws, and yet, we seem to be so willing to engage in trade with countries where those very same conditions that lead to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire over a hundred years ago, not only exist, but are part and parcel of the daily economic life of those nations.

The Toronto Star, last year, ran a remarkable article on the granite sidewalks of downtown Bloor Street in Toronto. The granite sidewalks should be a cautionary tale for all Canadians on the dangers of free trade with unequal partners.

The granite – named Atlantic Black and Atlantic Grey – was quarried and finished in Quebec. But it nearly came from a seemingly unlikely source: China. In what amounts to a coals-to-Newcastle yarn of astonishing proportions, granite cut and finished in China has recently taken the lion’s share of the Toronto construction market, whether it’s for pavers, tiles, wall cladding or the countertops in highrise condominiums.

Those in the Canadian industry like to joke that granite quarried in China comes in three colours – grey, grey and grey. But most of the granite materials produced by Chinese companies began as massive blocks of brightly coloured granite that were quarried elsewhere, in Brazil, South Africa and sometimes even Canada.
This stretch of Bloor might also have been paved in granite from China were it not for the pique of Radovan Kovacevic, whose Interex Marble Ltd. represents Quebec’s A. Lacroix et Fils Granit Ltee. It’s not just that Kovacevic had already lost too many bidding wars to those supplying Chinese granite. He calls this neighbourhood home. “I live here and I said, `I’m in this business and I’m not going to wake up in the morning and go on the street and see Chinese (granite),’” he says. “I wouldn’t even walk on Bloor St.”

To win the contract, Kovacevic says he essentially surrendered all of his profit and relied on Lacroix’s reputation for quality and fast service. Forget that much of Canada sits on granite, not least the great Canadian Shield that’s never far from the surface in the eastern half of the country. It’s about cost, the hard place where “buy local” slogans collide with an unforgiving market, even in the unlikely realm of granite.

Production costs are so low, and Chinese government assistance so generous, that Chinese firms can afford to buy granite from halfway around the world, ship it home, cut it into finished pieces, ship it back around the globe and still sell the resulting product for at least 40 per cent less than comparable granite manufactured here. “The Chinese are coming in and they’re cutting us here, there,” says Kovacevic. “I don’t know what the future is going to look like. Probably not very good.”

When you outsource manufacturing jobs to third world economies; your homegrown blue collar workers lose their jobs. Even worse than the loss of tax payers to a nation’s tax base is that those blue collar workers end up collecting national employment insurance. By the time EI benefits expire, only ‘some’ blue collar workers will have found work or been retrained.

When the largest demand for blue collar workers in Canada is found in industries which ask the age old question; “Do you want fries with that?” and most of those positions are currently filled by guest workers, illegals or family sponsored low-skills immigrants; what future is there for Canadian blue collar workers other than welfare recipient?

When Canadian white collar workers, who were previously employed in such places as call service centres or clerical workers have their semi-skilled jobs outsourced to third world countries in the name of providing value for ‘shareholders’– where can you realistically expect those Canadians to find employment when their Employment Insurance benefits end?

As a country, we no longer produce much of anything – other than hot air. National self-sufficiency has been sacrificed on the altar global capitalism which is all well and good except for one thing. Not every Canadian is capably of acquiring the necessary skill sets beyond their intellectual capacity, and this conservative, is rather tired to picking up the slack when manufacturers and producers take their operations to the third world and leave me footing the bill for their ‘shareholder value’.

Sure, I can buy a toaster ‘Made in China’ for a quarter of what it can be produced locally in Canada, but what good is it; when more and more of my income is gobbled up in taxes to support those Canadians who no longer can find employment which will provide them with the basics a living in Canada?

I’d much rather pay more for a Canadian made toaster and keep all three levels of government out of my pocket book and my fellow citizens working. As a conservative, I am rather tired of bailing out dinosaur industries like the automakers. As a country, we were forced to bail out those industries as otherwise there would be literally thousands of Canadians left destitute with no blue collar jobs to replace those that were lost when the big three automakers sunk under the weight of their collective economic hubris.

As a conservative, I was always thought of myself more as a ‘free-trade’ kind of gal…except how free is free trade when no distinction is made between unequal trading fields? I can understand the net stockholder benefit and net benefit to the third world ecomonies, and while the benefit to the Canadian consumer might result in initial lower product cost, but what good is lower costs; when my take home pay is slowly eroded through various taxes in order to keep my fellow Canadians on the dole? Eventually, that cheap toaster will be beyond even what I can afford to pay.

If there is one lesson to be learned from the consequences of unfettered capitalism it is that one should never rely on the moral character of any capitalist to do anything other than what increases their fiscal bottom-line. All of which is my long-winded way of saying why this conservative Canadian patriot will be taking a hard look at the provincial NDP campaign of Andrea Horwath. She seems to be the only politician who is interested in balancing the needs of Ontario citizens with the needs of business.

In a campaign swing through northern Ontario, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath vowed to stop resources mined in the province from being exported if they can be processed here.
“Companies are pulling them out of the ground and shipping them elsewhere for processing and it doesn’t have to be that way,” Horwath said Monday from Dubreuilville, Ont. “We need to be conscious about what is happening with our natural resources. It helps us put some control over how much of our resources get processed and it creates good jobs for Ontario families.” Horwath said the time to secure mining and resource jobs is now as Ontario begins to develop the Ring of Fire, a $30 billion chromite deposit nearly 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. (The Toronto Star)

In this coming provincial election, the voters need to choose, not between Conservatives or Liberals political philosophies as much as choosing their nation over idealogical economic purity.

The Globe and Mail is reporting that Canadian Defense Minister Peter Mackay is set to ask parliament to increase Canadian funding to the tune of $60 Million.

Apparently, we have already spent $26 million to date for our adventures in Libya. And this, from an alleged Conservative government – I cannot wait to see the next foolish war Stephen Harper elects to involve Canadian in – I’m taking bets it is Yemen.

The strategic thinking of why we are in Libya – as opposed to places like the North Korea, Syria, Iran, Sudan, or central Africa escapes me. And I am a little more than resentful having to fund and help finance the post-colonial adventures of France and Britain.

From what I can tell, the poor beleaguered taxpayers of Western NATO countries seem to be picking up the tab disproportionately for the so-called Arab Spring. An Arab spring, which I am starting to think of as more like the western winter – and I am cringing thinking about the size of the minimum payment needed to be made on the credit card come January.

How much do you want to bet this would be the one certain thing the Harperite Conservatives won’t want to learn from the Israelis to do? Ynet News:

China has sent a special delegation to Israel to learn about the aid provided by the Foreign Ministry to Israelis traveling abroad in times of distress. The reason for the trip was the growth in Chinese tourism across the world in the past few years.

The delegation was headed by the Chinese deputy foreign minister for legislation affairs and head of the Chinese foreign ministry’s consular department. They met with senior Foreign Ministry officials, including Deputy Director-General Rafi Barak and Yigal Tzarfati, head of the consular division.

The Chinese were interested in the nature of the cases in which Israel helps its citizens across the world, including incidents in which hikers are rescued and the steps taken in cases of missing people, road accidents, illnesses, the need to evacuate bodies, natural disasters, political instability and drug offenses. The Chinese also expressed their interest in the treatment of Israeli prisoners abroad.

Sigh.. All of which means there are now two things the Harperites won’t learn to do from the Israelis – care for our citizens abroad and airport security.

and your American Cossack foreign policy agenda. The Globe and Mail.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon is taking a harder line against Israel’s controversial decision to build settlements in East Jerusalem and now says he condemns the plan. That’s the strongest language to date by a Conservative cabinet minister against Israel. It comes in response to an Israeli plan to build 1,600 new apartments in a Jewish neighbourhood in disputed East Jerusalem.

What’s next from this putz – Canadian soldiers are dying in Afghanistan because a Jew builds a home in Jerusalem or goes to daven at Churva Synagogue? Just one of the many reasons I have nothing but contempt for the Harper styled conservatives – is the no-talent loons who he consistently stacks in his cabinet with.

Daniel Pipes:

“The stupidest program the U.S. government has ever undertaken” – last year that’s what I called American efforts to improve the Palestinian Authority (PA) military force. Slightly hyperbolic, yes, but the description fits because those efforts enhance the fighting power of enemies of the United States and its Israeli ally.

Go read the ‘why’ and just so all you Canadians don’t get too smug – the current Canadian government is just as butt stupid for expanding and continuing to fund Operation Proteus which is the Canadian Forces helping to train the Palestinian Authority ’security forces’ along side US General Dayton’s group.

h/tip: Sassywire.