Tory the jobs killer . Dicking and bobbing around with the employment in harpervalley . Can you guys afford four more years of recession . I was in alberta for a week . 99.9 gas at petro canada . Boy are we getting screwed in bc .

No carbon tax in Alberta explains some of it – yet.

If gasoline were hovering in the 5 to 10 cent a litre range, I could understand taking it to a tenth of a cent for pricing. Now that it hovers around a dollar and higher, the 99.9 cent instead of $1.00 is annoying and meaningless.

Despite this, I’m sure we’ll see a strong conservative win in both of PG’s ridings.

Now the Conservatives are responsible for the unemployment rate in Prince George. I did not know that Harper was involved in hiring part time workers. I thought he had bigger and better things to do.

Seems Ataloss is suffering from a bad case of one dimensional thinking (1DT). All bad things are caused by Harper and the Conservatives. All good things are a result of others,. Hmmmmmm.

Mulcair and Trudeau cannot get the Chinese to buy more coal. Neither can they get the Arabs to raise the price of their oil. If they could I’m sure they would have mentioned that in last nights debate. Steven Harper and the Conservatives are the best party to manage our economy. In the 2008 recession under the leadership of Harper and the Conservatives, we as a nation fared well and were the envy of many other countries.

If the NDP get in Federally we will be in big trouble. All you have to do is look next door to Alberta and Notley’s NDP government. The Canadian Oil sands have lost $128M in 90 days, $120M were Notley’s new taxes.

Before the election call Trudeau said if elected he would stop oil export from Prince Rupert. Can you imagine how many jobs would be lost? So who would be sucking jobs from this part of the country?

It’s truly amazing Mulcair, Trudeau and May, vilify the Alberta tar sands, which contributes billions into our economy. If they were to shut it down, where would we get the money to run our country? Where would the 100’s of thousands of unemployed people go? You want to talk job suckers, Mulcair, Trudeau & May, lead the pack.

Man, Cheetos, had to respond…you’re drinking way too much cool-aid.

Only G7 country currently in a recession. The only one. Thanks to Harper’s 1DT (thanks Palopou). We are currently not “the envy of many other countries.”

Deferred income tax liability is not actual taxes owing. Canadian Natural Resources revenue going from $5.37B to 3.42B (down 36%) had more to do with them losing money than a minor (2%) change in taxation. Is the international price of oil Notley’s fault as well?

How may jobs are currently supported by exporting oil from Prince Rupert? It’s hard to lose jobs when there aren’t any…

I don’t remember even one of those three saying they would shut down the tar sands, but feel free to correct me. I think there are in favour of responsible development though.

Quick research tells me there are roughly 500K jobs (direct an indirect) supported by the tar sands. coincidently that is almost the exact same number of manufacturing jobs the country has shed since Mr. Harper took over. Have you commented on that?

Fate: I don’t like cool-aid, gave it up years ago. If the three amigos Mulcair, Trudeau & May are so friendly towards the tar sands they wouldn’t have piled on Harper over the oil-sands and pipelines. Or were they just making political hay? At best the NDP are tip-toeing on the issue of oil production and pipe lines in Canada. NDP-er Nathan Cullen had his private member’s bill B C-628 defeated, that would have curtailed, the export of oil off of Prince Rupert. Around July 8, 2015 Justin Trudeau announced his party’s opposition in allowing crude oil tankers on BC north coast. Curtailing future job prospects for this part of the country. As mentioned these three Trudeau, Mulcair & May do not have a vision for the future and without that vision the economy would go in a tail spin downward. As far as manufacturing jobs, most people know they have mostly migrated to China. Your car was probably made in Mexico and so on. Previous governments long before Harper had entered the scene has signed away our jobs in what is called the Global Economy. It’s sad but true. Now we need a leader that can work within our new perimeters and Steven Harper in my view is the best. The context of my 2008 remark was 2008 not today, of which we still are the best country in the world.

We can thank Japan, China, Taiwan, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc; etc; for the loss of our manufacturing jobs over time.

Its really simple. With our high standard of living, and high wages, we cannot compete. $15.00 to $28.00 per hour in Canada, versus say $10.00 to $20.00 per day in China is pretty hard to beat.

Harper has pumped some money into research and development, however Canadian business cannot seem to come up with any ideas that would make them money and create jobs in this Country,.

We have gone to huge farms, cattle ranches, lumber mills, pulp mills, mines, railways, airlines, etc; etc; and at the same time these companies have been downsizing. Hence the huge dependence on the oil sands for jobs. Also Site C. We don’t need the power, but the BC Government needs to create some jobs, so that they can get re-elected.

Harpers plan to re-instate the home improvement grants will make a bit of a difference, however the real problem is Canadian business sitting on billions of dollars that they don’t want to invest.

Perhaps we need a tax on Corporate Revenue over a certain percentage of overall assets to give the Corporations a nudge to get off their butts and create some employment.

There is no oil being exported through Prince Rupert.

Harper’s “vision” is exploit the environment for all natural resources and then let his grandchildren deal with the mess. He wants to continue signing trade agreements that give our jobs and resources away. Sounds like a solid plan, seems to be working really well right now doesn’t it (only G7 country in recession)?

My car was made in the US, is not one of the big three and is awesome. Love the quality.

You nailed it with your comment on Site C Palopu. Governments in Canada, at all levels, govern to get re-elected, not to do what’s best for their constituents. We need electoral reform, to get rid of the stupid first past the post, to force parties to work together in the best interests of the people and not their parties.

The proposed home improvement grant is bribe. Nothing more. Exactly the same as the UCCB.

Fate: Yes some “foreign” cars are being assembled in USA and Canada, I think Honda is one of those companies. But the parts are still made over seas. Even the big three have some cars assembled in Mexico. An assembly line worker in Mexico makes $5.00 per hour (very enticing isn’t it) Our labour costs cannot compete with countries like Mexico or China or India. I believe a Chinese manufacturing job pays .50 cents per hour and India .45 cents per hour. The saving grace for Canada is we are blessed with a multitude of natural resources, which must be tapped into or we will not be able to continue in our life styles that we so love and want.

Before and Japan and very shortly after WWII came West Germany and then East Germany.

Do not blame those countries. Blame Canada for relying on natural resources to the extent they have. Other than a mindset of hunters and gatherers we learned from our very early ancestors, there is not a single reason why we could not have competed and could not compete into the future.

The world is getting smaller and the entire world is available to us to sell products to. There are a few companies that manage to do it and do it very well. We need to emulate them more.

Palopu, you are one of the ones who talks about entitlement and people seating on their asses. Well, Canada seems to feel it has an economic entitlement which results in the country and most of its leaders sitting on their asses.

Not only that, every time someone comes up with a suggestion you shoot it down. That is called being negative. It is called being unsupportive. It is called non-participation in problem solving.

That is the last thing this country needs.

The first sentence should read:

Before Japan and very shortly after WWII came West Germany and then East Germany.

Really getting tired of the corporate apologists stating “our wages and standard of living is too high, we can’t compete.
What a load of BS. Germany, Scandinavia, and a handful of other European and Asian countries have viable manufacturing that pays good wages. In many cases these, these countries buy their raw resources from us, and in some cases sell it back to us. What we need is voter participation that would demand statesmanship from elected officials. We have the resources, skills, and innovators to do the job, we just lack political will. Canada’s economy is swirling the drain, we’re winning the race to the bottom. I fear people will realize this fact much too late. We need change, but I doubt we’ll get it.

Then there are those just to fn lazy to work that send there partners off to work so they can smoke weed all day and go fishing.

You are correct about Scandinavia. Germany has high wages, salaries and benefits. It has the world’s best apprenticeship program. It is also a country of inventors and global investors. A good example are wind turbine generators. Not only are these to be seen all over Germany, but they are manufacturing them and exporting them as well.

” …most job losses were in part time positions.” No surprise here, Tom Mulcair stated in last night’s debate that job quality was the lowest in Canada in a quarter of a century. Thanks Harper!!!

www. cbc.ca/news/business/job-quality-in-canada-at-25-year-low-says-cibc-1.2982891

I couldn’t agree more with govsux.
Our politicians keep trying to leverage raw resources to boost our economy. That’s the best way to be on the boom/bust cycle. We need to innovate, use our own resources to supply potential innovators. Everyone is always terrified of govn’t subsidies as well. Northern European countries often rank as the happiest countries in the world, yet they have some of the highest tax rates. These tax rates just mean more free services, like free post-secondary education. Which results in their younger generation having education easily accessible, and they aren’t in crippling debt when they graduate. They can actual make purchases (homes, cars, etc.) and taxes are earned from their success and they aren’t a slave of the financial industry paying heaps of interest.

Germany has also started to subsidize meat, in an effort to make healthy food options more available to the general public.

Cheetos, the wise thing to do would be to tap into our natural resources and at the same time be in the forefront of innovation and manufacturing. These two things should go hand in hand and be pursued with equal intensity. One does not have to exclude the other. Harper however has put all his eggs into the Alberta resource extraction basket and look how that worked out! He also sold the 74 million shares the Canadian government held in GM, thereby losing our only position of strength we had as major GM shareholders. We actually had some influence on future plans of GM. Now we have nothing left and some assembly is being moved to locations south of here! Very short sighted! All that in a desperate attempt to balance a budget which has no hope of ever being honestly balanced without cooking the books!

Hahahahaha “we actually had some influence on future pans of GM”… That is why they moved assembly and manufacturing plants to Mexico and closed the truck plant in Oshawa and the Windsor transmission plant while we held shares

Palopu we need site C to provide free power at charging stations for Ataloss and Sage’s EVs

If you consider Canada’s place in the world we do pretty good considering what we are up against.

Canada has a land mass of 9,970,610 Sq Km. and a population of 35 Million. We are the second largest Country in the world after Russia.

Compare those numbers to the European Union with a land mass of 4,324,782 sq km and a population of 507 Million , or Mexico with a population of 120 Million, China over 1 Billion, USA 322 Million, Japan 126 Million, and on and on it goes.

Canada biggest trading partner is the USA, mainly because they are the closest to us and we can compete with them on some level. If we want to sell to other Countries (assuming we could compete in manufacturing) we still face huge transportation and logistic problems.

So its pretty bloody obvious that we have some serious problems when it comes to competing on the world stage, and pretty obvious that we do not have the population base to support inter provincial trade to the level of some other Countries.

Those Countries like the EU that have comparable wages, also have hundreds of millions of people in a very small area. Those Countries who have a similar land base, such as Mexico have cheap labour which helps offset the cost of transportation and logistics, plus they have a huge population that can consume a lot of their production.

So there is some food for thought for those who think that we can compete on the world markets. We are basically a raw material exporting Country, and unless someone somewhere has a great idea on how we can get out of this rut, we will remain a raw material exporting Country,

Dumbfounded my lady does that too but she always has the fish cooked by the time I get home so I don’t mind. (:

The strongest economies in the world don’t survive on shipping out raw materials do they. Do you really think Chinese or Japanese governments would run Canada the way our government does? Somewhere along the line they lost the idea of ‘value added’.

Nice try, Palopu, but your argument that a low population density is a factor of any significance in the wealth of the region is an old one. It does not carry any weight anymore. It may have 100 years ago.

Population density and economic wealth are independent variables.

Using 2014 World Bank data, here is a list of GDP/capita related to the population density for the 25 top GDP/capita regions.

1 Norway 97,363 14
2 Macao SAR, China 96,444 19,247
3 Qatar 93,397 195
4 Australia 61,887 3
5 Denmark 60,634 133
6 Sweden 58,887 24
7 Singapore 56,287 7,814
8 United States 54,630 35
9 Ireland 53,314 67
10 Iceland 52,111 3
11 Netherlands 51,590 500
12 Austria 51,127 104
13 Canada 50,271 4
14 Finland 49,541 18
15 Germany 47,627 232
16 Belgium 47,517 371
17 United Kingdom 45,603 267
18 France 42,736 121
19 United Arab Emirates 42,522 113
20 Brunei Darussalam 40,776 80
21 Hong Kong SAR, China 40,170 6,897
22 Israel 37,032 380
23 Japan 36,194 349
24 Italy 34,960 209
25 Spain 30,262 93

Jim13136 wrote: “Do you really think Chinese or Japanese governments would run Canada the way our government does.”

I very much agree with that line of thinking.

1. China is a communist Country and most business’s are run by or controlled by the Government.

2. Japan has some of the largest Corporations in the world and these corporations work hand and hand with the Japanese Government. Japan has no raw materials to speak of.

So you cant compare China or Japan to Canada.

We presently have a Canadian Lumber Co., forming a partnership with a Chinese Co., to manufacture Canadian Lumber into window, and door frames, and mouldings and ship them to customers including customers in Canada. So if you think about that for a moment you will begin to see why we cannot compete. If we could we would make the mouldings, and door frames in Canada.

“Another interesting feature of this new Canfor / Caofeidian Wood venture is that Caofeidian Wood is also involved in the development of a nearby massive deep water port in northern China that, among other functions, will be a hub for the importation of lumber and raw logs from BC and other locations. This “Log Port”, as it is called, will include a fumigation facility, which is important, because without it, wood can only be shipped to it in winter months. As Russ Taylor of Vancouver-based Wood Markets Group says, “the B.C. logging sector now has the opportunity to export logs year-round to a new port” (1).” Some of you might remember this Peter Ewart OpEd.

So Christy and Harper’s solution is to increase raw log exports from BC to China, there goes our good paying sawmill jobs.

“Hahahahaha “we actually had some influence on future pans of GM”…”

I do not think that this is a laughing matter! Obviously then Harper failed to exert the influence Canada still had at any time! Perhaps it was not even a priority on the CP agenda. Whose fault is that? Four more years? Scary!

Prince George:-“You are correct about Scandinavia. Germany has high wages, salaries and benefits. It has the world’s best apprenticeship program. It is also a country of inventors and global investors. A good example are wind turbine generators. Not only are these to be seen all over Germany, but they are manufacturing them and exporting them as well.”

————————————————————————-

And still trying to get paid for a lot of them, too, I’ll bet. Wonder how many they sold to Greece? Friend of mine came from Germany. Went back for a visit. Told me the place was over-run with Middle-Eastern workers, imported to do the work Germans now seem to feel is beneath them. Wasn’t impressed, said he wouldn’t want to live there again.

That’s the trouble with ‘value-added’, you know. Too many people see the ‘value’ being supposedly ‘added’ as another ‘job’. They confuse ‘value’ with ‘cost’. Properly, value-added is any further process taken beyond the basic stages of some product’s manufacture that can RETURN ITS COSTS PLUS AN ADDITIONAL PROFIT. If it can’t do that, then no ‘value’ has been added, and it’s as big a waste of time and effort as continually digging holes and then re-filling them. If it CAN do that, somebody will step up to the plate and do it. Just try to stop them (and we do, in the inane regulatory and punitive property taxation climates we’ve created here in BC).

From the World Bank:

“Many African countries face a dilemma. After a decade of consistent economic growth, often propelled by high commodity prices, half the continent’s population still lives in poverty. Even if rising demand for raw materials from the booming cities of China and India, among others, has driven growth in Africa’s mining sector, most of the continent has not yet translated mineral wealth into industrialization and widespread economic development. Most African countries continue to export raw materials and then pay a premium to import the products made with them.”

Africa needs to “shift from exporting of largely raw material to ensuring that minerals serve as a catalyst for accelerated industrialization through mineral value-addition,” said Susan Shabangu, South Africa’s Minister of Mines.”

Canada is quite a bit further along than that, but it is still basically the same hurdle we have to overcome.

“That’s the trouble with ‘value-added’, you know. Too many people see the ‘value’ being supposedly ‘added’ as another ‘job'”

Socredible, you have the same mantra over and over again. Can you please enlighten us and tell me where in the world they have it right and are using your philosophy to get a leg up on the rest of us.

BTW, as far as Germany and most of the EU, the “foreign worker” situation is probably close to 50 years old. Nothing new. Those people who came from Germany in the late 50’s and early 60’s do not recognize it with its international population.

I speak German fluently. I was there in the mid 60 working in a hospital and had a roomy rom India. He spoke German with hardly any accent. He was studying there.

I look at WDR (a German TV station with live streaming) and listen to a black girl speaking German fluently and with the local dialect where she lives.

I think it is great!!! Reminds me of Canada. Not so much some of the people who post on this site, however. The bigotry from some is not a welcome thing for me to read.

gopg2015, quoting World Bank:- “Africa needs to “shift from exporting of largely raw material to ensuring that minerals serve as a catalyst for accelerated industrialization through mineral value-addition,” said Susan Shabangu, South Africa’s Minister of Mines.”

And then himself:- “Canada is quite a bit further along than that, but it is still basically the same hurdle we have to overcome.”

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No, it is not. The problem here is purely ‘financial’. In Africa there is a genuine poverty, simply because there is often a complete lack of the ‘means of production’, or where they do exist, an incomplete or completely absent knowledge of how to best use them. There, if some one person has too much, it usually means a whole bunch of others really do have too little. Wealth, actual wealth that can be produced, is limited by the situation that exists there. Here, this is not the case. Our poverty, where it exists, is purely ‘financial’. The real wealth is there, or capable of being produced in abundance, (or over abundance, even), but the means of distribution ~ ‘money’ itself, is kept insufficient to enable a proper balance between ‘production’ and ‘consumption’ to occur. We don’t have to rob Peter to pay Paul, no matter how rich Peter is, or how much those who’d represent Paul might make political hay out of promising to reduce Peter to similar economic misery.

Now ask yourself this, if we took every raw material or semi-manufactured good we export from this country and finished it completely here, just who would we sell all this production to, and how would they pay us for it? We’re not going to be selling them any wheat anymore, it’ll be all made into bread and cakes here, and sold that way. No more lumber, it’ll be all made into pre-fab homes and furniture and all, and shipped completed. And so on, and so forth. So how do we do that? And just what do we get back for it? And if everywhere did the same? Could they? Financially speaking, that is?

Canada has a land mass of 9,970,610 Sq Km. and a population of 35 Million. We are the second largest Country in the world after Russia.

====================================

And roughly 90% of that land mass is not habitable, so don’t bother including it in your example. It is a red herring.

You need to focus on that strip of land adjacent to the US border and our major urban centres. If you do that, the map of Canada becomes FAR less daunting with respect to logistics and even arguments around population density.

You are assuming that the country is evenly distributed within our borders and/or along the Trans-Canada or Hwy 97. It isn’t.

Socredible:”Told me the place (Germany) was over-run with Middle-Eastern workers, imported to do the work Germans now seem to feel is beneath them.”

How do you tell the difference between those you say were “imported” and those who were taken in by Germany as asylum seekers, fleeing the mess in Syria and elsewhere? Just heard last night that Germany takes in 10 times more asylum seekers and refugees from all over the world then Britain. They are grateful to find a new safe home and will do any kind of work in order to stand on their own two feet, earn a living and learn the language. Germany is also taking in asylum seekers by having German citizens sponsoring them. Many of the asylum seekers are highly trained professionals and find jobs in the medical, technical and engineering professions! Germany even has a system which attempts to re-unite families which were split up by the turmoil in the Middle East. You seem to enjoy crunching everything by monetary and number concerns, totally forgetting the human element which is far more important.

You make it sound as if the Germans are exploiting the newcomers – far from it!

IF your country is exporting raw materials then they are exporting JOBS….

IF China ever puts trade sanctions on Canada our store shelves would be empty…wake up Canadians you are at the mercy of a foreign country because your government has allowed all goods manufacturing to leave this country…along with all the JOBS.

And then people wonder why we have high unemployment.

Wow ! After reading these posts I started to have Brian Mulroney flashbacks.