"Green Shift" Shows Liberals Still Ontario-Quebec Centric

I'm going to call Stephane Dion's green plan what we're all thinking; the green shaft. I'm sure that four letter word has crossed all our minds as the Liberal leader prepares to push his carbon tax agenda on a groaning Canada. One need not look to Kennedy or Roswell to find conspiracies since I would argue the green movement and politicians are both working together to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt in order to fuel their own agenda. For the Liberals, taxation seems to be the solution to everything. People smoke too much, tax it. People use health care too much, tax it more. People drive too much, tax them too. So now we're moving onto the dreaded carbon tax. The greenies have argued that the release of carbon in the atmosphere has gone on for too long and now it's time to pay the real cost of it. Academics love the idea, while sitting in their ivory towers watching the world go by through green coloured glasses. Such ideas, like the proposed carbon tax, are often created through knee jerk reactions to problems, or perceived problems, by politicians who have no idea what they're talking about.

This weekend, the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut joined Alberta and Saskatchewan in denouncing the Liberal leader's plan. According to the three territorial premiers, the plan would do great harm to northern communities since they rely on diesel fuel for heat and electricity. They argue that a carbon tax would futher add to already prohibative fuel costs and would do great harm to the territorial citizens. They noted that it was impractical to put in place alternative energy sources in the region. The cold tundra is hardly an ideal spot for wind or solar power. Alberta and Saskatchewan worry about economic collapse since the tax would put a heavy burden on the two provinces' oil industries. Oil provides a living for many living in the area. In BC, the first province to enact a carbon tax, truckers and remote communities are fuming since they can no longer afford fuel. Truckers are demanding to be exempt from the tax, something the government is unlikely to do. According to polls though, over half of Canadians have warmed up to the carbon tax. Unfrotunately, these polls tend to be "small-n" studies that interview perhaps 1000 people, willing to answer the phone to telemarketrs, in central Canada with no reguard to the rest of the country. Central Canada holds about half of the country's population. The problem is that most of Canada's resource rich regions, which our national economy depends upon, aren't located in central Canada but rather in the west. So far, I'm seeing more and more provinces and people lashing out against the idea of a carbon tax. Even we here in Ontario need to worry, as I indicated in a previous article. Prime Minister Stephen Harper rightly indicated that such a tax would "screw" Canadians. Even the NDP has dumped the idea since they know it will alienate their labour-centric voting base, many of whom work in the oil industry out west.

So why does Dion think this is a good idea when the costs of it are so high. First of all, we've all been lied to that the Earth will be destroyed by anthropogenic global warming, which is a dubious theory at best. Perhaps Dion genuinely thinks he will do some good all be it he is naive in thinking so. More accurately, it's simply another cash grab. Dion claims that the carbon tax will be revenue neutral, meaning that it will be offset by massive tax cuts in income taxes. Brian Mulroney tried the same thing when he instituted the controversial Goods and Services Tax back in the 1980s. The revenue neutral nature of the GST never saw the light of day and was largely responsible for the Progressive Conservatives not being reelected in 1993. (Scrapping the GST was a major part of Cretien's campaign, which also never say the light of day) Dion himself was environment minister under the Cretien government. He was appointed to the position rather than being an elected MP. He is where he is due to a healthy dose of patronage by his former boss, who himself was a cronie of Trudeau.

Dion has most recently been looking to the Australian model for his carbon tax. Their tax was instituted by new left wing government after former conservative PM Gordon Brown failed to win reelection. Australia may be a vast country but it is a warmer climate that doesn't rely on fossil fuels for heating. It also lacks the energy industry that Canada has. Trying to fit the Australian model to Canada is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. If he wants to compare it to another country, perhaps he should look to Europe, more specifically to our motherland, the UK. The United Kingdom has some of the highest taxes on carbon in the developed world. So far, it has gotten to the point where people cannot afford fuel and truck drivers are launching massive protests against high fuel prices. Many Britains are now living in fuel poverty. The UK like us has a colder climate and has a major oil and gas industry. I'd hardly think that Labour's carbon tax has worked there. Protests in the UK have been echoed by similar protests in other EU countries, and for what? Is there any proof that putting a tax on carbon emissions will reduce greenhouse gases and cancel global warming? I will give $1000 to the first person that can give me a mountain of proof from certified academic, peer-reviewed sources that it does. There in lies the rub. If you cannot prove that such a tax will have ANY effect on it's intended purpose, then it should not be implemented. Besides, you cannot discourage carbon use without having some sort of alternative being implemented. Without these alternatives, the carbon tax just screams cash grab.

What it amounts to is an abuse of power so that Dion can simply get rid of things he doesn't personally like. This all indicates to me that the Liberals simply want to plug their ears, close their eyes, and pretend there's nothing west of Sudbury and nothing east of Quebec City. This is exactly why the party is faltering. What you see in the polls are the die hard liberals who wouldn't change their vote no matter what. The party is at serious risk of becoming irrelevant and out of touch with Canadians, and stunts like the "Green Shift" don't help much. Right now, they're hoping to capitalize on the green hysteria. If it will work, I really can't say. The one thing I can say for sure is that Harper is right, it will screw Canadians.

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Musings On Macleans, York U, and Islam's War on Words

Islam was thrust into the spotlight in 2001 when several religious zealots hijacked American planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It's one of those events where you can remember exactly where you were and what you were doing at the time. In the nearly seven years since then, I've had a lot of time to muse on the nature of terrorism and Islam. While not all Muslims are terrorists, all the terrorists involved in 9/11 and similar atrocities were Muslim. I ultimately believe that the West did not push the Middle-East towards this and the events were orchestrated by a mad man. However, the wars in Iraq and strained relations with Iran have done little to help the situation in recent years.

On the home front, Islam has been fighting a war of words against the West, or rather a war on words. The religion has found it very difficult to deal with Western styles and multiculturalism. Islam has taken an lesson from Scientology and is now using the legal system as a method to attack and ruin their critics. Currently, journalist Mark Steyn and Macleans magazine are being hauled in front of the BC Human Rights Tribunal for "smearing Islam." The Canadian Islamic Congress called the Steyn article hate speech. The article in question was called The Future Belongs to Islam. The article basically brings up the issue of a weakening Global North. Islamic youth, who are one of the fastest growing segments of the global population, are further becoming radicallized and will change the shape of the world. You can read it for yourself and make your own judgements. Islam certainly isn't the first religion to use the legal system to attempt to silence critics. I already mentioned Scientology, who is currently fighting with Wikileaks and internet group Anonymous. Christianity as well has a very long history of doing this. What makes Islam any different? The answer is nothing, but that still doesn't make it right.

Hate speech tends to be a very subjective thing. Who determines what is offensive? An individual, a group, or a government? Who determines how severe the offensive remark or piece is? That's the ultimate problem with this kind of censorship, it's a slippery slope. There is no set formula for determining hate speech, nor can there ever be. The government simply defines it as something that incites hatred, which is a very vague statement in itself. People need to realize that words are words, not weapons. In an open and civilized society, if someone makes a remark you disagree with, you are entirely free to counter that position. The issue at stake here is that interest groups can now use your own words as a weapon against you. The problem with human rights tribunals is they're nothing more than kangaroo courts. They are not proper courts of law but rather civilian bodies stocked with civil servants. They are considered the lowest rung of the legal ladder and they do answer to the higher courts. The fact that you are being put on trial by people who may or may not be trained and qualified justices is something disturbing. The tribunals can't really do much other than to smear your good name. There's no guarantee you're going to get a fair trial. They are not required to follow precedent. Much of what goes on gets twisted in legal babble and psychological warfare. If hate is against the law, why aren't the courts dealing with it? I suppose people would be up in arms if that happened. Canadians as a whole are less tolerant of censorship than Americans are, at least concerning the explicit variety. The tribunals present a more implicit form of censorship since they tend to fly under the radar of the media. Many Canadian news outlets have failed to even discuss these issues.

A double standard does exist when it comes to hate speech and how Canadians deal with human rights. Such cases of this can be seen at Canadian universities. I picked York University, located in northern Toronto as one case study since it happens to be one of the most pronounced local cases of this happening. It's student's union has made pushes to censor and dispel any debate on campus. Their basic argument is that you can have debates on issues, such as abortion, as long as you tow our line. The abortion debate was one of the more recent cases when the student's union met for an emergency meeting a couple weeks ago and decreed that pro-life groups on campus would no longer receive funding in an effort to silence them. I consider myself pro-choice but I find this to be an appalling case of deliberate censorship at an institution that is supposed to openly encourage unencumbered debate. Islam falls into this due to similar issues over the debate of Israel. To me, the whole Israel-Palestine conflict has seemed childish. The whole conflict has been over a small strip of land out in the dessert that people on both sides are willing to slaughter children for. To me the optimal solution would simply be to unite the two sides into a federal republic with two semi-autonomous provinces. This would certainly be the civilized way of doing things. While religion does play a role in the Israel issue, it is really over who controls what land. However, other Muslims have chosen to highlight religious tensions to distort what is really going on. Many universities have begun to hold "Israeli Apartheid" weeks in which Islamic students and their socialist comrades protest all things Jewish. These frequently turn into mini-riots with Jewish students being harassed. If these events involved white men adorned with Nazi tattoos and sheets over their heads, we would call this racism. If the students perpetrating these acts are Muslim, suddenly it becomes an expression of their beliefs. Sorry, but I'm going to have to call this out on what it is. Muslim students that participate in these events and the students unions that allow this to go on are racist and anti-Semitic. I suppose it's interesting to note though that Karl Marx, who students unions love, was an anti-Semite himself despite having Jewish ancestry. I'm hardly an appolegist for the Jews. I'm rather indifferent towards Israel. However, I do feel that these campus unions are so deeply hypocritical when campus hallways are adorned with posters that tell you to denounce racism and create a positive learning space. The problem is that most students do not vote in student council elections. I admit that I never did. The reason was because they all ran on nearly identical socialist platforms. I could vote for either Team Yellow or Team Orange but either way, I'm going to get the same thing. If I do not support that, I have nobody to vote for. It seems that everything on campus now is religion or ethnicity based. Things like the chess club of old have been replaced by the Chinese Students Club, or the Christian Club, or the Muslim Club. It seems to me that universities are becoming more exclusive rather than inclusive. The social engineers always proudly refer to Canadian multiculturalism as being the tossed salad compared to the United States' melting pot. However, I'm not sure this is really working to anybody's benefit. The universities are a shining example to the failure of this thinking.

The face of our country is changing, that's a given. Whether this has been a positive thing or a negative one is up to an individuals own interpretation. The issue is different groups essentially abusing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the legal system to launch attacks at one another. This I think we can all agree is a very negative thing. The goal of the Charter was to encourage unity, not divisiveness. Canadians cannot let go of the values we've spent 130 years building simply because some group finds them offensive or incompatible with how they lived back in their old country. There should be a sign at every immigration line at the airport saying "Welcome to Canada, you're Canadian now, leave your past and current conflicts at the door". We badly need to adopt the US melting pot if we're going to survive in a multicultural society. Our current salad bowl policy is going to lead to disaster.

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Who's to Blame for GM Fiasco

GM has announced that it cease production at four North American truck plants, laying off 1000 workers at the Oshawa plant. Workers are obviously very upset since they just signed a contract guaranteeing job security until at least 2011. As the dust settles today, talk radio will likely be bristling over who's to blame for this. I'm hardly a union supporter but I do feel this was an act in bad faith. It also shows some weaknesses in GM's management and the business itself. The questions to ask now are what caused this and what can we do about it.

I've personally never owned an American car and I never would. Some may think me to be in the wrong to not buy locally. However, I feel that there are no American cars currently on the market that are both reliable and fuel efficient, or meet my needs. The American car has become what the Japanese cars once were, garbage. I've known a few people who own or deal with GM products and they've all said they need major repairs only after a couple years of ownership. The likes of Honda and Toyota are built solid and they take pride in that notion. Quality issues are across the board when it comes to American manufacturers but GM tends to have the worst record of the bunch due to cost cutting measures and part substitutions. It's one of the reasons the cars tend to be so cheap.

Another problem for the American manufacturers has come from the price of gas which has led to the crash of the big vehicle market. Back in the 1990s, you could but a litre of gas for a scant (by today's standards) 50 cents. The monster 30 gallon tanks in SUVs, pickups, and minivans could be filled for $50. 2007 is when I would pin the shift since it's the year when prices stabilized at at or over $1 per litre in Canada. Today at a $1.30, that massive tank now costs over $130 to fill. Assuming you fill that thing up once a week, every week, it would cost $6760 per year for fuel alone. This compares to about $2600 eighteen years ago, which is about $3800 in today's money. It's interesting to note we're paying 177% more for fuel than we should be. I digress. Obviously six grand is a lot of money when the average income is only about $30,000. In the 1990s, SUVs and vans were seen as practical due to the perception of them being safer and also because of their greater flexibility. Today as a commuter vehicle, the price of gas has made them prohibitive for the average consumer to operate. This second problem is the one GM has chosen to blame for the job losses at its four truck plants, including the one in Oshawa.

The question people have been asking is who is to blame for this. I place the blame squarely on GM and the Canadian Auto worker's Union. Over the past few years, General Motors has made a series of bad business decisions. The writing has been on the wall for some time but the company's management was either too blind or too stupid to read it. From about 2002 to 2008, the price of gas has jumped from around 60 cents to $1.30 in Canada. Analysts in both Canada and the US had been warning automakers for some time that the market for small and medium trucks would burst soon. 2005 was a benchmark year since it was the first time gas prices touched record highs. It was also the first year where gas rose over the psychological barrier of $1 per litre. 2008 has seen a sharp drop in demand in SUVs and vans and a sharp rise in the demand for cars and crossovers. You didn't need to be an economist or auto market expert to have seen this coming three years ago. However, the folks at GM continued churning out these large vehicles. They overproduced a product and now nobody wants it, the price of them has dropped dramatically and people who already own trucks find they cant' sell them. It's simply supply and demand. Nobody wants the sub 20mpg SUV anymore. Honda and Toyota et al out in Japan jumped in on the small car market years ago. People laughed at the concept of compact cars being in high demand, but now they are. It's now Toyota and Honda laughing their way to the bank. Other American automakers were late to the starting gate. Both Ford and Chrysler have now released their own widely successful lines of crossovers and small cars. When opportunity called, GM execs must of been in the washroom. Under basic consumerism, if you can't give the people what they want, they'll go someplace else, and you loose business. To add to the matter, GM signed a contract with it's workers just two weeks ago guaranteeing job security until at least 2011. To come back fourteen days later and say "we were kidding, 1000 of you are going to loose your jobs" is highly unprofessional and in very bad faith. For a company that badly needs some good PR, they certainly aren't doing much to help themselves. I expect the shareholders are going to eat them alive on this since it seems to me the company needs a change in management.

The union too is part to blame, mainly for making North American labour uncompetitive. Out of any job, autoworkers have some of the sweetest of perks, on par or even beyond those of school teachers in this province. They have full medical, dental, and vision care. They get very generous pensions. The company basically looks after your family from cradle to grave under these contracts. On top of that, they get higher cost of living increases than anyone else. I remember hearing from someone that assembly line workers make $70 per hour, which is double what most other unskilled labourers get. These perks of course come at a price. Companies go to countries like Mexico, where you can pay the workers under half of what you have to pay North American workers. However, Mexican workers are still getting double what they would make doing another job so they're quite content with the pay and perks they get. Since they don't need skilled labourers to put cars together, automakers are going to naturally seek out the cheaper rate. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since as I said, the Mexican worker is going to be making more than what they would have, thus increasing their standard of living. The problem is that the CAW and the UAW have painted themselves into a corner. They treat these perks as a god given right but in the process, they're pricing themselves right out of the labour market.
For years, we've known that manufacturing is not the way of the future. The second industrial revolution in the 1960s was a sign of this when people began moving out of factories and into to services. Right now, this is currently transitioning to focus on more personal based services as companies outsource their work to other countries. This means a transition to a more educated workforce. Analysts are predicting a huge boon for skilled trades and professions such as doctors. Unskilled, assembly line labourers are becoming obsolete. The notion of job security in this day and age too is foolish. They tell kids these days that you will most likely have several jobs over your lifetime. Nobody works for the same company for 40 years anymore. However, unions are choosing to fight what they call the scourge of globalization. At this point though, stopping globalization is like trying to stop a tornado. CAW boss Buzz Hargrove has called for the federal government to levy teriffs on import cars, but this is impossible to do. The whole irony about this is that both Honda and Toyota have several plants in Canada and the US. They may not be part of the CAW though, which could be Buzzy boy's problem. Besides that, putting tariffs on foreign made goods is an ass backwards approach. This form of thinking is no different from the Luddites back during the first Industrial Revolution. They too were tilting at windmills. This is not capitalism's fault either since globalization has shown to care little of what economic system you are running under. Take China for example.

The final share of blame goes to the provincial government. Like the unions, they too have failed to see the path of globalization ahead of them. They've convinced themselves that Ontario always has been and always will be a manufacturing heartland. As I said though, the current trends are showing otherwise. Obviously it is in the government's best interest to keep workers employed, however they are choosing to ignore the changing realities. One of the biggest problems is the handing out of multi-million dollar aid packages to the automakers such as GM. I believe that these handouts only reinforce bad business decisions. Essentially, the province has forked out tax payer dollars to keep people manufacturing a product that nobody wants. While this is not the sole reason why GM has been making poor decisions, it certainly is a contributing factor. Of course the argument can be made that without those handouts, Oshawa workers would have found themselves without jobs long before now. True, but they're still ultimately going to loos their jobs. All these handouts did was delay the inevitable for a couple of years. However, doing nothing doesn't win votes and I really don't see any practical/feasible alternative either the province or the federal government could have taken.

The auto industry is failing in Ontario. Ultimately this round has been the fault of General Motors and they should shoulder most of the blame. The union too has made mistakes by pricing themselves out of the market at a time when manufacturing is becoming obsolete. There will likely be a lot of questions asked over the coming weeks, including a possible wildcat strike by GM employees. However, one cannot delay the inevitable. The province and the feds need to brace for more of this to happen in the future and contingency plans need to be made as soon as possible. Ontario has already made the moves to retrial manufacturing workers who have lost their jobs but this may not be enough. Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done to alleviate this, or at least nothing that couldn't have been done years ago.

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