The Last Exile

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.

I’m still dealing with things but I read this today and I got to ask – -am I the only one who finds it a trifle schizoid that the official Harperite position is that the long form census documents are too intrusive and far too invasive for the government to ask the citizenry to fill in but it’s just okay-dokey for the federal government to provide a foreign government the name, gender and date of birth of every Canadian travelling through ‘US airspace’ -even though their plane is not landing on US soil.

And if I fly Air Canada or West Jet from Toronto to New Brunswick to visit my mother – why do I need to be vetted by the US government just because the wings of my plane may cruise above Maine for a few minutes?

What could possibly go wrong?

And how is it that the everyone and their grandmother can defy the wishes/desires and requests of the current White House Administration but the Harperites grovel to comply?

The Toronto Star runs a rare editorial praising the actions of the Harper Brain Trust which should give all thinking people to cause to pause and re-think their positions on any issue

Canadians with debilitating multiple sclerosis are understandably expressing disappointment — even to the point of bitterness — over the federal government’s rejection of clinical trials into the controversial new “liberation treatment” for the debilitating disease.

A cure can’t come fast enough for those struggling against the neurological ravages of MS, and for their anguished friends and relatives. And rightly so. But it must be a real cure — one backed up by sound scientific evidence showing it is both safe and beneficial.

There is no such proof at hand for liberation treatment. Indeed, an expert panel convened by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research has unanimously concluded that there is “an overwhelming lack of scientific evidence on the safety and efficacy of the procedure.”

Under these circumstances, federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq had no real choice but to announce on Wednesday that Ottawa is not yet prepared to fund clinical trials in this controversial form of MS treatment. “To ensure that we have the evidence to support this procedure, we need to do the research,” Aglukkaq said. “And once we have that, we will proceed … with pan-Canadian clinical trials. At this point in time, we do not have the evidence to proceed.” Although heartbreaking to MS sufferers, Aglukkaq’s approach is both prudent and responsible.

There is a word weasliness coming from the traditionalists in the medical and scientific circles and its inherent in the federal government’s refusal to fund wide scale clinical trials using the so-called Liberation Treatment and it can be summed up this way. There is no evidence Dr. Zamboni’s theory is correct or this procedure is a cure for MS; ergo, why should large scale clinical trials be funded or performed?

Dr. Zamboni’s theory may be very well wrong, and his treatment may not be a cure for MS, but if a simple angioplasty procedure opening up the block veins in an MS patient’s neck could very well represent the equivalent of a daily insulin injection to a diabetic patient. It may not be a cure but any procedure which allows an MS patient to participate fully in life and offers relief from the debilitating effects of MS and the drugs used to control it - should be fully be explored and funded.

There are approximately 75,000 people in Canada suffering from MS and they spend approximately 2,000 a month using traditional drug treatment. Given the average MS patient can live a relatively long life with horrendous suffering; its the goose which lays the golden egg for Big Pharma. It appears a treatment which can be had for less than the yearly costs of MS drugs which potentially and dramatically improves the quality of life for MS suffers for a year or longer loses out in Canada. Is it any wonder the federal government’s decision not to establish and fund wide scale clinical trial is a very bitter pill for all Canadians suffering from MS?

For more information on the Liberation Treatment watch this W5 report on it.

I create characters for my stories all the time. It’s the real life characters I find un-fracking unbelievable.

The love of money is what is destroying Christian and Judea societies all over Europe and the West. Look at Bloomberg, a money-loving Jew who has sold his soul for the arabs’ dirty money. ( ‘Dodo can spell” but grammar/punctuation…)

‘Money-loving Jew’, now where have I heard that before? Speaking strictly from my anecdotal experience, I would say the modern community of Judea is actually thriving quite nicely, although it might be under siege from time to time from the neighbours – but it has absolutely nothing to do with money.

All of which explains why I never joined the Blogging Tories – it just doesn’t pay.

The Toronto Star carries this article about a You Tube video which went viral showing Canadian airline staff letting a few veiled muslim women board a plane without demanding the woman de-veil in order to compare their faces with their ID presented and suggests the Muslim community fears a backlash over the hoopla.

Go watch the video and come back.

Okay, I’ll state the rather obvious and suggest the backlash was already in play which is rather the entire point of making the video and why it went viral. Once again, I will play the dissenting conservative and point out why the airline clerk might have broke with airline procedure but in no way does it necessarily imply airline passenger safety was compromised for one simple reason. And I know this from having flown out of Montreal and Toronto airports on more than a few occasions.

The women had already been searched, inspected, x-rayed, and clear prior to entry into the boarding gate areas. No one can directly entire the gate areas without going through a rather ridiculous procedure involving x-rays, searches and having your ID scrutinized by the airport security personnel. In fact, I am not sure that the airline steward has to do more than check that the passenger’s picture ID matches the airline ticket issued. It’s not for them to play ‘cop’ and demand a public de-veiling – although I could be wrong on that point. The airline rules are draconian enough these days when literally anything tagged as a ’safety’ procedure can literally fly.

All Canadians flyers know this, and if a little common sense was exercised; we should be asking why the video-grapher felt an innate need to target veiled Muslim women with their camera in the first place.

Flying is already a horrendous enough ordeal. and if this much-ado-about nothing video results in any more ridiculous safety rules issued by Canadian airport security officials, I suggest the entire nation hunts down this video-grapher and ensures he/she spends the next 50 years chained to the wall in their laundry room and fed nothing but stale pastries.

Generally speaking, I am a law and order type but the one thing I have zero tolerance for is when agents of the state callously abuse the coercive powers of the law to subvert the law of the land. The civil suits from the G20 are going to be a horrendous burden on the taxpayers of this country because the security services acted in a fashion which put their conduct above the law they had sworn to uphold. Think I am wrong – just think Officer Bubbles. Secondly, it’s going to be very hard for the government to successfully win any of the suits brought against them considering the number of ‘legal monitors’ which were arbitrary detained among the 1100 plus arrested and detained, and then, mostly released without charge. The Hill Times Online

Civil liberties lawyers and Parliamentarians are gathering evidence they say will show Toronto police systematically violated legal and human rights as they quelled protests with the largest mass arrests in Canadian history at the G20 leaders’ summit in Toronto last month.

The evidence includes eyewitness accounts from lawyers who acted as monitors during the protests where police arrested 1,105 people, including bystanders, lawful protesters and some of the legal monitors, but released more than 900 with no charges.

Up to six lawyers who volunteered as monitors with the Osgoode Hall Law Union were swept up by police and have provided affidavit-style evidence to organizers about the abuses they witnessed in the notorious temporary prison Toronto police set up in an abandoned film studio, says Adrienne Telford, one of the organizers. The Canadian Civil Liberties Union had up to 50 legal monitors at the protests and is compiling information.

Go ahead and rant about the violent antics of the so-called Black Bloc rioters but remember this; 15,000 security officers allowed the Black Bloc to riot contrary to in downtown Toronto without a single police officer lifting a hand to stop the riot for over 90 minutes. The Black Bloc could have been easily been apprehended and stopped in their tracks, but instead, security forces chose to stand down regardless of potential threat to human lives and willful destruction to property. There were many law abiding citizens in the stores and restaurants the Black Bloc attacked but security forces chose not to intervene. Now the Toronto Police are spending umpteen hours and funds from the public purse attempting to hunt down and arrest the so-called Black Bloc. It would have been far easier on the public purse to arrest them in the act rather than harassing innocent citizens for wearing black and carrying backpacks long after the Black Bloc had disappeared much like thieves in the night.

I miss the days when ‘prudence’ and ‘thoughtfulness’ were considered conservative values. In Canada’s current evolutionism, the Harperites have thrown principled conservatism to the four winds and replaced it with knee-jerk appeals to everyone’s lowest base instinct. No where is this more apparent than the Tories latest ‘tough on crime’ legislative offering. The Toronto Star.

OTTAWA—Criminals convicted of sexually abusing children or of three serious offences would be permanently ineligible for pardons under new reforms proposed today by the Conservative government. The bill would also drop the word “pardon” and replace it with “record suspension,” to better reflect the effect of a pardon, and society’s view of the long-lasting harm to victims.

(…)The reforms would also force offenders to wait longer before being able to apply for a pardon- extending the time to five years for summary offences, and to 10 years for more serious “indictable” offences.

And unlike former NHL hockey player Sheldon Kennedy, I am not ‘honoured’ by the ‘the thought’ which the Harperites drafted this cesspool piece of legislation. Let me explain why.

There are basically three levels of criminal offences brought be before the courts for prosecution – summary, indictable and what is referred to as hybrid offences. Hybrid offences are violations of criminal code wherein a Crown Attorney can make a choice to pursue a criminal matter as either a summary or indictable offence before the court. If a founding of guilt is established a Justice can impose a harsher penalty if the hybrid matter is treated as an indictable offence. Whether an offence is treated as a summary or indictable matter varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction across the country.

For example, simple possession of marijuana can be prosecuted as a ‘hybrid’ offence. In the City of Toronto just under a ounce of marijuana could potentially be prosecuted as a summary matter with a charge of simple possession wherein that same charge in Northumberland Country, New Brunswick – a Crown Attorney may seek to pursue the matter as an indictable offence. So an 18 year old found guilty of possession for a couple of joints under the proposed Tory legislation now has to wait five years for a pardon and be unduly punished for a relatively minor criminal code violation for which he would under the new law have to wait a full five years to obtain a pardon. Of course, if that same 18 year old in Northumberland County in New Brunswick is found guilty of possession as an indictable offence; he would have to wait 10 years. Either way, 5 to 10 years for a single non-violent, no-victim stupid mistake.

Or what about the man who is charged and found guilty for communicating for the purpose of prostitution for asking the wrong woman how much for a blow job would have to carry around a criminal record up to five years and be banned from working at even the local 7/11 because in a moment of weakness and/or need he made a bad decision and is not eligible to be ‘bonded’. While we are told the vast majority of pardon applications are approved it is not indicative that the pardon process is ‘broken’ but rather the vast majority of those seeking a pardon are able to demonstrate they have put criminal behaviour behind them.

My understanding of the ‘three or more serious offences’ legislative strike the Tories are proposing does not take into account that an individual can commit and be convicted of multiply serious charges arising from a single matter. In fact, its quite common for police to lay a multitude of charges applying the widest possible interpretation to criminal code violations in order to give the Crown something to bargain as an inducement to get a defendant to plea guilty for.

I knew individual who was convicted of armed robbery times two, and three counts of aggravated assault from one single incident at 18. He was duly sentenced to jail, paroled and managed to turn his life around. Twenty years, four kids, and a business owner employing 10 people – today he wouldn’t even jaywalk if you paid him. I once asked how was he able to put everything behind him. He had a great deal of help, a great probation officer and the knowledge if he could get through the 5 year wait period he could finally turn his back on all his bad decisions. It doesn’t happen often but it does happen. So why remove the carrot and deny hope a chance to take root?

Take a stroll through my archives, I have constantly ranted about the justice system but its not the pardon process which represents a crucial flaw in the process. If anything, the current pardon process is the one thing which has more or less functioned extremely well. And while you may think the proposed legislation is not aimed at an 18 year olds convicted of a few joints or a the socially challenged schmuck looking for a blow job that is exactly who stands to suffer the most – and ask yourself this – who do exactly do you think is most representative of a pardon seeker; a Hell’s Angel biker or the stupid schmuck? Better yet, demand Harper tell you which contingent of ‘criminals’ are actually seeking the majority of pardons.

While Sheldon Kennedy may be outraged that his sexual abuser only had to wait a few years for his pardon after serving a relatively light sentence of 3 and ½ years in jail for the sexual assault of a minor his anger at the pardon process is misplaced and should be directed towards though who sit on high in judgment and consistently sentence sexual offenders to relatively light (or even no) jail terms. That is what gets my outrage meter moving.

Now if the Tories wanted to take a stab at real reform of the criminal justice system they could start by reviewing if political appointments to the Judicial bench is the way to best way of picking a Judge or a Justice of the Peace. Can we say its the ultimate in cushy patronage appointments? The Tories could see about establishing a review process set up as a mandatory mechanism every few years where all justices records and rulings are reviewed. We could even allow input from the public, the Crown’s office and the police force all have a say wherein any Justice has found to consistently take too light a hand with his grovel in handing down sentence. The Tories could even take a shot at reforming our current bail system wherein alleged accused is allowed out on multiple bails for multiple different matters.

Of course, true reform of our justice system without summarily addressing the role addiction and mental illness play in criminality is more or less just sticking a finger in the dyke strategy and hoping the deluge won’t wash you away when the dyke breaks periodically. Alternatively, we might try taking a comprehensive look at how Sweden handles addiction and mental illness and crime. But that would take time, thoughtfulness and prudence….all things missing in Harper style conservatism.

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.

Finally, someone says aloud what most of us have been thinking for sometime. Bernie Farber may not be anyone’s ideal of the cavalry but at least his grasp of Jewish ethnics is impeccable. Here is a portion of his speech given at Shaar Shalom synagogue.

(Hat tip goes to Big City Liberal. Yes, I read him. He is in my reader and while I don’t always agree with what he writes – at least he still writes rather than market his blog as cyber answer to the shopping channel.)

“Our view of the universe was so limited that all we could do was talk about the connection between words and actions. Len was, in the loud and proud words of this blogger, “to stupid to be a Jew”. He had other things to say as well, including derisive comments on a perceived physically disability that he wrongly claimed Len had.

Did I mention that the blogger in question was Jewish? Is this the way that one member of the community publicly speaks of another? By engaging in ad hominen attacks? By referring to physical characteristics? This is the sort of thing one expects to find in the schoolyard. The behaviour is no less acceptable because the practitioner is in his 40’s rather than 14. Indead, this is not a “one-off”. This same Jewish blogger who upholds the rights of neo-nazis to malign Jews, has referred to other Jewish professionals as “liars, cowards, moochers” and has made consistent references to me as a “nazi book-burner’.

(…)
He is not the only one. The blogsphere is sadly replete with bullies, jerks, racists, homophobes, and bigots. But here my friend is the kicker, these same racists, bigots and misogynists all ‘love’ Israel and as a result there are those in our community who will tolerate them, even accept them.

Accepting those who engage in motsi ra can never be OK…ever!”

Amen. I am not much of a Jewish conservative as my inclinations are far too frum but maybe its time to visit Shaar Shalom when the next urge to shul it hits.