Shock report: many people work in the auto industry

The forest industry is a completely different situation than the automotive sector. It isn’t in trouble in the U.S. the problem is that American owned companies have for decades loaded all the costs on their Canadian fibre supply operations and derived the profit from their finishing mills state side. They’ve been selling to themselves and revinesting the profits, not in the pulp mills in Canada, not in the forests in Canada, but in high efficiency mills and plantations closer to their end markets in the U.S. We’ve been subsidizing this process with low stumpage fees, and now that they don’t really need our trees all that much, we’d be paying them to take jobs away.

Any “bailout” should be for the single industry communities that are dependent on forest products companies that close, not for the companies themselves. And governments everywhere should take a page out of Danny Williams’ book by reclaiming any forest rights and reallocating them to viable producers that remain. If you want to do something for the forest sector, consider financing for smaller operations and locally-owned start-ups so they can use the forest and create some local employment in communities that will otherwise experience 80% unemployment, and a complete crash in housing values, followed by the forced emigration to urban areas of almost all of the adults under 50.

McGuinty is now using this report to say that $3 billion payout that’s already been proposed is just the first in what could be many payments. The car companies, and McGuinty, are going to get our money by hook or by crook it seems.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/16/AR2008121602482.html

kody,

yes, reporters creating news is something to be very careful about. I’m not sure how the young generation will be able to distinguish between news reporting and opinion making, for it seems that the line between the two gets more and more blurred. Will the young generation be presented with an opportunity to experience the difference? I don’t know.

Coming back briefly to editorials on Harper’s interview on ATV. The ATV interviewer was trying hard to have Harper express his regret about what was contained within the FU. The interviewer pushed very hard, but Harper would not spit out the words being put into his mouth. Then in today’s G&M editorial, tried to force feed Harper once more.

But Harper should never apologize for what he had put into the FU, most noteworthy the subsidy cut to political parties. Subsidies to political parties form as much an obstacle to our economic well-being as does any other program. Subsidizing a separarist party will ensure many minority governments to come. This is not solely a Conservative party problem but is a problem for all federal parties participating within federal elections.

It is very strange how so many supporters of the coalition seem to think that the threat to Canadian unity hinges around the fact that the BQ might ask the coalitoin government to re-open Quebec unity issues (language, for instance, or unity issue related demands).

But that is not why the participation of the BQ within the coalition poses such a danger to our federation. By including the BQ within a proposed coalition, the BQ has in essence achieved the presentation of a two-nation federation. To undo that slide-in will amount to much more mayhem than we have seen over the past few weeks. Harper was pre-warning us about what could be set into motion, and for such honest warnings, he should never have to apologize to anyone. In fact, I would be extremely disappointed if he would apologize for having expressed such forsight.

Moe Uniting, that’s brilliant. The Mosquito Bomber was made out of wood, and it played a HUGE role in winning WWII. Maybe the answer to our future is in the past.

Imagine, cars made out of wood, powered by wood. Rolling along on wooden wheels, on a highway made out of…. WOOD!!

Seriously though, does anyone find it odd that government would actually subsidize companies so they could keep cutting down more trees? I’m not a tree-hugger or anything, but really – paying companies to cut more trees? Because cutting them down isn’t profitable on its own? Is that not just slightly perverse?

Yes, Two Cents (do I know you formerly, or what!)

Harper has said so himself: he is not against the formations of coalitions within our parliamentary system. He in fact does not consider the idea to be anti-democratic. But Harper is against ligitimizing the presence of a separatist/provincial party within our federal house by asking them to be formal partners.

Had the LPC and the NDP proposed an opposition without formal inclusion of the BQ, Harper might not have asked for the house to be prorogued. The cool-off period was needed to come to an understanding of what actually had occurred.

I find it striking that LPC and the NDP had been so eager, had been so willing to sign up an agreement with the BQ. The formal agreement does tell but half of the story; the speed at which this happened was truly historical, for it seems as if the LPC and the NDP had put no question marks beside the inclusion of a separatist party at all. It had not been given much thought at all! That is truly an historic marker for Canadian politics, and for the BQ as well, I must add.

If the big 3 all go under, the foreign auto producers will have no reason to keep their North American plants operating. They will gradually move fabrication and, perhaps more easily, their parts manufacturing back to their home countries. Opening plants in North America was done to make consumers fell less guilty and more likely to buy so called imports. It worked. But not necessary if the big 3 go down. People are really pretty naive about these guys (Toyota, Honda, VW etc).