Another one locking in his pension ten years earlier than if he waits till after the election . This one should make it 51 MPs not run or should I say running away with the money .

Steve should have kicked the parliamentary pension rules ajustment down the road just a bit farther . The guy just can’t think anything through to its logical conclusion .

Another rat abandons the sinking ship… and he has a nice gold life jacket thanks to us tax payers

Probably gets the same pensions as other MP’s Liberal or NDP, a little more because he is a Minister.

He has been in politics for 15 years. He’s working in Ottawa which is a long way from home and he has a young son with special needs. At 39 maybe he felt that he should put his family first. Maybe his wife would like him to be there when they have to go to Children’s Hospital.

Good luck to him and his family.

Ataloss, maybe we should eliminate cpp for leftards. There goes your paycheck.

Poor Dow . I love how people like you measure others success by your own . My pay check comes from my gold plated corporate defined benefit plan and corporate share plan . TFSA is such a wonderful hiding place for cap gain . In a few more years the likelihood of ever paying taxes on harvested profits will disappear . CPP is nice but I couldn’t live on it . I pity those that have too .

Remember Ataloss, when you or any of your left wing nutbars, including the NDP and the Greens, are pointing a finger at someone or something, there are three more fingers pointing right back at you!!

Something that all of us conveniently seem to forget! ;-)

OMG Ataloss, you are living on a corporate pension plan and share plan?

Aren’t you the guy who HATES those nasty corporations?

For shame, Ataloss, for shame, haha!!!

That’s why you should alway point all your fingers at your protagonists . Plus it confuses the heck out of them .

Stockaloss, it was Harper who created the TFSA program. You should acknowledge that basic fact. You are a stunning hypocrite, but nothing you post is a surprise.

I don’t hate corporations . Don’t be such a drama queen . I just think corporations should be law abiding , socially mindful and productive members of society . Not the welfare bums that the various levels of governments have allowed them to become . This sort of thing only happens in third world countries or quasi third world countries like Canada . We bailed out the auto industry in canada in the last GFC and now they reward us Canadians by moving operations to Mexico . But I guess you harperettes are okay with that . I’m not . They should have to leave that money here in Canada but that’s not going to happen .

Dow you sound like a twelve year old . Okay I will give credit for the TFSA . It was thought of , promoted by Garth Turner mp when he was still in Cabinet . Then it was implimented by the late finance minister Jim Flaherty . I doubt very much that harper would have understood the implications of it .

As a result of having an industry minister from BC, how did BC industry benefit from this? Did we get any industry in PG, for instance, which we otherwise would not have gotten?

Was this something I should be asking IPG about? Or do I get to ask that question of Ian Wells now?

gopg2015 asks a couple of interesting questions; “As a result of having an industry minister from BC, how did BC industry benefit from this? Did we get any industry in PG, for instance, which we otherwise would not have gotten?”

The answers are; we are not Tarberta, which is the province and industry that our Federal government exists to support and serve. Big Oil & Gas hijacked our political system, had been doing it for 46 years in Alberta, and has been doing in at the federal level for almost a decade.

The good people in Alberta have smartened up and taken back the control over their provincial politics, and so will the rest of Canada come October 19th. Yup, good bye oil and gas Harper it will be!

Elizabeth May will be the Prime Minister ?

I heard his 2 yr old son has a rare bone disease..

Dianne watts may run, now there is a big name.

Notice Ataloss has been caught out on his/her rhetoric so often is now starting to back up.

There is no industry located in PG because we have nothing to produce but Pulp, Paper, Lumber.

Our biggest industry is Government Workers, Teachers, Pensioners, and people on social assistance. I sincerely doubt that we need anymore of those, with perhaps the exception of pensioners.

So for all you brilliant leftwing/greeners, with your superior intellect, give us some examples of what industry could be located here, what it would produce, and where it would be sold/consumed.

Once again I will wait with bated breath for the scintillating examples that I am sure will be forthcoming. You are not allowed to use Site C, LNG Industry in Kitimat, Prince Rupert, Red Chris copper up Highway 37.

Ataloss. Nice to see you wiggle and squirm when Dow puts you on the spot. Trying to pretend that Garth Turner, and Jim Flaherty are somehow **Good** Conservatives, and Harper is a **bad** Conservative.

Oh Well, whatever works for you.

“So for all you brilliant leftwing/greeners, with your superior intellect, give us some examples of what industry could be located here, what it would produce, and where it would be sold/consumed.

Once again I will wait with bated breath for the scintillating examples that I am sure will be forthcoming.”

Yeah, that figures; both federal ridings have been Conservative for more than a decade, and jack chite has been accomplished for bringing in new industry, or expanding current ones. Yet here comes pompous Palopu demanding the left provide answers, and then he has the gall to establish rules around what our suggestions should not include.

Tonight’s winner winner chicken dinner award goes to Palopu’s 6:48 pm comment. Say good night Pal.

There are no smart conservatives in the Stephen Harper brigade.

Then make your own rules SS and try to answer the question.

Ah, so the Ministry of Industry is actually not the Ministry responsible for ALL industry, but just manufacturing then?

So why do they not call it the Ministry of Manufacturing. Basically Ontario and Quebec do 75% of that in Canada.

All town and cities have some kind of industry. The last time I looked industry was classified as primary, secondary and tertiary. But maybe that was too long ago.

Small to medium sized cities, unless they are satellites around a metro core, have little to no chance these days of doing significant manufacturing of goods UNLESS their primary market is global and they are close to an airport which can ship globally.

They can, however, be inventive by being included in the global knowledge industry, although clusters with face to face proximity of similar human resources are the preferred incubators of such operations.

So, even though the ties for both are long in Prince George, there are firms which have been able to overcome that. One has to look at the USA industrial scene to find some examples. There are also some in Europe. The distances in Canada still provide a significant obstacle, probably more imagined than real. Then again, decentralization is not one of Canada’s strengths.

But then again, neither is manufacturing. That is why a newbie who has no manufacturing industry background could be the Minister responsible under Harper.

Palopu , I said no such thing . They are neither good or bad . They are the cards that were delt .

Cross laminated timber is a relatively new building material invented about 20 years ago in Austria and Germany. The firms which worked on this are located in regions with forestry as a primary industry.

An example is the Austrian engineering firm of KLH, which worked jointly with the Graz University of Technology to develop CLT.. They opened a production site in 1999 in a village of something like 500 called Katch It is located in the foothills of the Alps. It is 225 km to the outskirts of Vienna with a 2.5 to 3 hour drive. It is about 300km to the outskirts of Munich with a 3.5 to 4 hour drive. It is 120 km to Graz with about a 1.5 hour drive. Graz has a population of 300,000 and is the closest airport with a passenger volume about twice that of PG. The runway is just under 10,000 feet long enabling 747s to land.

The company employs 130 and produces 650,000 m2 of solid CLT panels.

In Canada Structurlam, located in Penticton, is over 50 years old. It opened the first North American CLT plant in 2011. They have 3 plants now – Penticton, Okanagan Falls, Oliver. They ship products nationally, and internationally.

While there are many barriers one has to overcome in life, the toughest ones to overcome are those which we create in our own minds.

I’m getting the feeling that the people of Alberta are now starting to ask themselves “OMG What the @^%* have we done??”

I also think that Ataloss and Sophie Saga might want to stock up on tissues before the fall election. How on earth are you two going to handle Harper and the Conservatives re-re-re-election?

How you ask ? Copious amounts of cooking sherry while listening to Kermit sing its not easy being green.

I always thought PG was a natural fit for truck and rail manufacturing. We got all the metallurgical coal in the world at our doorstep, and the gas and hydro power to convert it into steel.

PG should be all over the new DOT101 tankers or what ever they are called for transporting petroleum. A huge massive shortage and backlog on these mandated rail cars. Something like a 10,000 car back log and most will be operating in Canada.

PG should also be home to truck manufacturing for specialized units like ETV’s, firetrucks, ambulances, bucket trucks… you name it if it goes on a truck and works then it should be assembled in PG. PG has the rail infrastructure to ship the product to all corners of North America; PG has multiple port access points closer to Asia than anything else in the America’s; PG has all the safe secure power supply needed for any intensive manufacturing; and PG has an international capable cargo airport at the ready only minutes away from any assembly plant.

The big failure of the conservatives and Jame Moore was allowing the BCR Site to become what it has. I mean James Moore probably hosted programs on the radio discussing the very issue of the derelict Rustads, NCP, or Netherlands sawmill sites. Industry plays games about re-purposing the lands to avoid cleanup costs that would put the land back into productive service to the community as available lands for new industry and tax revenue.

The city of PG even put up millions paving 5km of the Willow Cale North road putting in fancy street lighting the whole way, and sewer, and water, and power access… might be worth $10 million dollars of wasted infrastructure investment at this point a decade later. The senior governments were MIA, so IPG went looking for plumbers in Ireland.

James Moore could easily have carried a big stick to Canfor’s side about the Rustad and NCP land reclamation imperative. He could of very well provided incentives to have some of this industrial lands re-purposed for manufacturing. But when the local MP Dick Harris lives 800km away in the sunshine and rarely visits because he is the sure thing for re-election… I guess these possibilities never raise to the top of those with influence.

“I always thought PG was a natural fit for truck and rail manufacturing.”

All that kind of manufacturing / assembly is heading south to Mexico. They’ve leapfrogged us, and are now the #2 vehicle production country with their know-how, and their wage that is 10% of our seasoned plant workers. This will only get worse as more and more manufacturing plants are being built down there, and Canada’s get moth-balled.

Manufacturing is leaving Ontario also because of the increasing energy costs. Costly inefficient heavily subsidised mislabeled so called green power.

There’s an old axiom that’s as true, or maybe even more so, today, as when it was first uttered. “Consumer demand is the only (sane) origin of all economic activity.” CONSUMER DEMAND ~ not ‘jobs’. The latter is only a secondary result of producing anything, as is the ridiculous notion that that ‘jobs’ are the ONLY means to distribute ‘incomes’. So long as we not only try to make an ‘end’ out of a mere ‘means’, but insist on making it the primary purpose we do anything, we’re fated to seeing continual recurring failure in our whole economic system. If there truly was a consumer demand for cross laminated timber panels, or more steel, or railcars, or heavy trucks, or anything else, and that demand was an ‘effective demand’ ( the costs can be fully recovered in price, plus enough of a profit to make repeating the process worthwhile), don’t you think someone would be doing it?

Harper is the worst Prime Minister in the history of this country. There were 13 successive surpluses previous to his assumption of power. He has brought the Canadian economy to the same unemployment and economic level as was in the 1930’s. He has pandered to corporate welfare on the back of Joe Average Canadian. He has allowed foreign dictatorships to buy up valuable agricultural bread basket lands in Canada with no foreign ownership regulations or protections to Canadians. He will destroy public health care when the funding is reduced by 3% if he wins next election. He has allowed banks and other corps that use Canadian infrastructures paid by tax payers to out source Canadian jobs and fire Canadian workers. Become informed from all sources before you vote.

Further to the above:- Because, after all, just look at all the things people try to do now where there is NO, or a greatly insufficient, ‘effective demand’. Here’s a further thought for you. If you ever achieved the politician’s dream, (of ALL the current Parties), and had 100% full employment, with everyone who could possibly work working full time in the workforce, could the total collective amount of the wages, salaries, and profits (distributed as dividends or other income to those who own businesses), actually BUY and FULLY PAY FOR, ALL THE ‘PRODUCTION’ OF THIS FULL EMPLOYMENT? Or its exchange through export, if we were trading what we produce for the production of alternate goods made elsewhere? I can tell you right now, if you don’t want to do the math yourself, it COULD NOT! Not in any modern industrial economy, anywhere. They ALL depend on exponentially increasing DEBT to function ~ and just WHO is it that holds this debt? Not you, or I, though we may provide the smokescreen that it is, but those who have been given a monopoly on its creation, and the enviable position of being not only the deal makers but the terms breakers ~ the banking system.

Maxima, if Harper had insisted on ‘balanced Budgets’ all through the worldwide financial crisis that came on in 2008, those on the left would be calling him the same thing you’re calling him, and worse. And rightly so, for the suffering of many people would’ve been far worse than it was when the Conservatives deficit spent and thereby kept them employed. As far as corporations go, if your employer isn’t getting his how long do you think it’ll be before you won’t be getting yours? ‘Foreign dictatorsips’? I assume you mean the sale of the CWB to a Saudi Arabian based entity. So what? Canadian farmers can sell their crops anywhere they want now, they’re not restricted to selling to a government monopoly like they were before. Public health care? The Conservatives have increased the number of dollars spent on it, not reduced them. And still it is said to be underfunded, and the wait times are excessively long if you need service and aren’t suffering from just the right ailment. Perhaps we should take a look at why? How come some private ‘for profit’ clinics can give so much faster service on ANY ailment than the publicly funded one can?