An editorial by Coyne in the Montreal Gazette on the Caterpillar closing of the Electro-Motive Diesel locomotive plant in London, Ont.

The union and far-left media has been enraged and have taken a few liberties with the truth.. in fact their whole argument is based in outright lies.

1) Caterpillar was absconding with a vast storehouse of intellectual property developed at “London’s 90-year-old EMD” — patents, technology, equipment, trade secrets, manufacturing processes, the works.

EMD is not a Canadian company. Caterpillar bought it from American private equity firms who bought it from General Motors, who bought it from its Ohio-based founders in 1930. Since 1935 it has been headquartered in La Grange, Illinois. The London branch plant was opened in 1950.

Even if it were a Canadian company, and even if it possessed a Valhalla of patents, it still wouldn’t belong to “us.” It would belong to them: its Canadian owners, who shelled out good money for it, presumably in anticipation of selling it one day. Caterpillar didn’t steal the company: it paid for it.

2) “Only last year, a $5-million federal subsidy hand-delivered by Stephen Harper during a factory visit.”

EMD never received any subsidies from the federal government; certainly not since Caterpillar bought it. The Harper visit to which Olive refers was to promote a tax break for the purchasers of locomotives, not the manufacturers. The visit occurred in 2008, two years before the Caterpillar purchase.

3) It was nothing less than “highway robbery,” political columnist Martin Regg Cohn raged. Caterpillar had bought the plant purely in order to “harvest the technological know-how subsidized with government incentives and writeoffs.” But never mind the industrial rape: there are bigger issues in play. “Why underwrite our companies,” Cohn wrote, “if we willingly sell off our embedded brainpower to foreign bidders who leave Canada cash-rich, patent poor and jobless?”

It’s not clear how the foreign investment laws could have been invoked to cover a purchase of an American company by another American company.

And the solution to this theft of “our” industrial birthright? “Surely Harper could have demanded job guarantees when his government approved the sale of the London company to Caterpillar”. Columnist Olive suggests nationalization, or as a fallback, a prohibitive tariff on all Caterpillar imports. As Olive sees it, “that might eventually bring Athabasca tarsands production, heavily reliant on Caterpillar equipment, to a halt.”

If it is wrong for a firm to close a plant or lay off workers, it is just as wrong whether it has recently been the object of a foreign takeover bid or not. Perhaps you will say we should bar all companies from closing a plant. OK: why would they ever open one? If workers, once hired, cannot ever be laid off, why would they ever be hired?

Of course, there’s always Olive’s suggestion of a punitive tariff, through which the cost of keeping jobs in London locomotive plants could be shared by consumers and businesses across the country. (You’re welcome.) This would recreate the system of foreign branch plants that existed in the days before free trade, small factories producing exclusively for the domestic market. Rather than lament at foreigners stealing our jobs and technology, the nationalists could once again lament at being tenants in our own land.

Call it an inconvenient truth.. too bad for the London Workers, but that is the way it works. You have to take the good with the bad, or you end up being a Venezuela.

Which is what they really want.

 photo credit: DuccioBartolozzi

Shaw paid $25.5-million to retired CEO

The Globe and Mail story is about the retirement plan of recently retired Jim Shaw.. None of the shareholders were asked what they think..

The comments that follow here are 100% against the family that built one of Canada’s most successful businesses. It’s an expected response, and the Globe and Mail uses these types of stories to get people upset. It’s none of their business… if they don’t like Shaw’s rates, cancel. (I am mad at the CBC, but how do I get it off of my TV?)

On a different note, we’re constantly told of how bad off we are.. and how our poverty continues to increase.

Vancouver, the world’s #1 and most livable city, is now #22 in Canada for family income. We’ve fallen behind my home province, Saskatchewan. Oh, dear.

Real earnings show decades of decline in livable Vancouver

Some key points:

Why should we pay attention? My parents taught me that income is no one’s business. It’s a private matter and up to each person to make their own.

The creative among us have found a way to keep their income up:

B.C.’s rates may be skewed somewhat by a larger-than-average underground economy and the thousands of British Columbians involved in the production and distribution of illegal drugs, a source of income that few likely declare.

Drugs and Real Estate are the drivers of Vancouver’s wealth and economy… income that isn’t being accounted for. Let’s not talk about that. These folks are making a fortune. That’s what really keeps Vancouver going.

Blame the tax rate:

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives calculates that the cut in provincial taxes between the turn of the century and 2010 is the equivalent of a $3.4 billion annual cut in government program spending. Since most of the benefit of tax cuts goes to the highest income earners, the diminished capacity of the government to provide services is, relatively speaking, a double whammy for the poor.

Because they cut taxes so income-earners could keep more of THEIR OWN MONEY, we now are in decline. No mention of the HST, Carbon Tax, and the other numerous taxes they’ve created to offset all of this..

You’d think that our generous social programs would actually be propping up our standard of living.. lord knows we spend enough.

• Poverty in BC represents a direct cost to government alone of $2.2 to $2.3 billion annually, or close to 6% of the provincial budget.
• The cost to society overall is considerably higher — conservatively estimated at $8.1 to $9.2 billion per year, or between 4.1% and 4.7% of BC’s GDP.

How poverty costs us (me) is something I am not really clear on. Aren’t we spending this money to help lift people out of poverty? If so, why does it keep costing me more?

Shouldn’t we be encouraging business growth, trying to attract high-paying jobs to BC?

Instead, we keep finding new ways to take from the “haves”, skim a chunk off for expanding our gov’t, and give away the rest to the “have nots”.

Encouraging the “poor” or “99%’ers” to blame the rich is the socialists way of extracting more money from all working Canadians.

Let’s call it what it really is – a wealth transfer. And a lousy one that keeps us all down. The game has been going on for far too long.

The Sun did an article on the US/Canada price gap, which seems to have grown as fast as our dollar has risen.

Anytime I bring this up – insurance, gas, cars, food… the list goes on – I hear it’s because of taxes, “free” healthcare, and lack of the competition in our market.

Really?

We have more brands of grocery chains than Washington. We have malls with all the chains. Insurance… we have a state-run monopoly here, so I’ll leave that for another day.

The way to get their attention is to revolt… with our wallets.

A month or so ago, my wife and I got up in the morning and drove to Bellingham. A short drive that was paid for in gas savings.

We bought around $500 in clothes (would have been $750+ here) and $300 in groceries. Stayed away from beer although it was hard to resist. I know this is what fears Canada Customs most.

4 hours later, back to Canada. I knew I broke the 24 hour rule and wanted to find out if they would arrest me.

I told the lonely border guard exactly what we purchased and was told “Thanks”. I asked if I have to pay anything and was told “Nope”.

Since then we go every weekend. It’s quickly become how we spent our summer holidays.

When we cross into the US, I let them know that I am going down for a few hours  to spend a lot of money. My border crossing is now under 1 minute. They appreciate the business. I am hoping they’ll start a frequent flyer club for people like me… Nexus aside.

I bought a new TV for half price on one of our day trips and had to pay GST.. still saved 40%. I buy all my electronics, tires, golf clubs there now. When they tell me to stop inside and pay tax on these purchase- about 15% of the time – I gladly do. Seems imports from Asia trigger the GST.

If all border Canadians could start doing this, the message would be sent fast. We might see prices drop. At worst, we’d all get to experience customer service, great prices and stretch our pay a bit. Did I mention chicken is 1/2 price?

Or, we can wait for Flaherty to complete his inquiry.. while the bleed us dry.

Send Canadian retail the message. It’s how we get change.

photo credit: manyhighways

Ballots for our mail-in HST referendum will be to you soon.

Remember to read carefully – they’ve made it counter intuitive.

Yes means get rid of it. No means you want to keep it.

Despite the massive propaganda campaign the BC gov’t is running, even the left hates this tax. For good reason.

With the average price of a home now topping 1 million, the HST is crushing people when buying a new home, a car (used included), or any making a major purchase (Dining out is now a major purchase in BC).

Throw is the slew of taxes we have that are unique to BC and you’ll see how they are doing their best to push people into perpetual poverty. (Land transfer tax, insurance premium tax, airport improvement tax, fuel tax, carbon tax, tobacco tax, liquor tax, hotel room tax, environmental taxes, recycling taxes…)

It’s become so ridiculous, I’ve now added a 20 mile bi-weekly trip to Washington to get my gas (saving $2/gallon), groceries (30-50% savings), and major purchases like computers, TVs, etc.I am not alone – thousands line up each weekend to do the same. (Hint- going through duty free saves an hour in line.)

Most of the time the Canadian Customs forgets to ask me to declare anything, so I get to save the 12% HST on my discounted American purchases. Bonus.

I am also contributing to the once-struggling Blaine economy. Guilt free. The only downside is the border wait… although coming home there isn’t any. (Another thing you may want to pay attention to – tourism is dropping off a cliff.)

So Christy, if you want to keep the tax that brought down Gordon, consider this:

1) Kill personal income tax… lead the way on tax reform. I’ll pay 15% HST if you quit charging me income tax. One or the other.

2) If you can’t show the courage to do #1, drop all the other taxes consumers are forced to pay… (see list above).  Then you can say that HST unified and simplified taxes. Get rid of the carbon tax and you may even get re-elected.

Or, if you are inclined to act as we’d expect a BC politician to act…

3) Drop the HST rate to 10%, so we can do the math when we are buying our overpriced items. If it doesn’t drop to 10% immediately – vote YES to remove the HST.

Oh, and cut spending. Try to run a government with what it has coming in, not whatever it needs.

Stop the abuse of the BC taxpayer.

Remember – Yes means No to HST.

photo: Vancouver Province

Alberta a ‘job-creation machine’ while rest of country lags behind.

Unemployment rate hits national 2-year low of 5.7%

Alberta’s unemployment rate was second lowest in the country, tied with Saskatchewan and behind Manitoba’s 5.3 per cent. A year ago, Alberta’s unemployment rate was 6.8 per cent while the Calgary region’s was 7.1 per cent.

Hmmm.. where do we stand in BC? 8.8% unemployment.

It wouldn’t have anything to do with our carbon taxes, a hostile environment towards business, or the ridiculous 12% tax on everything we buy?

Just so we don’t get too smug about the problems Canada faces, it’s important to note that we aren’t much better off than the US – even after Obama’s looting of America.

Total Government Gross Debt (% of GDP) for Canada in year 2010 is 81.703 %.

Total Government Gross Debt (% of GDP) for United States in year 2010 is 92.715 %.

BC, Ontario and Quebec are the provinces that can change things – unfortunately the political leanings mean more tax, more debt and more unemployed, and more entitlements.

We should also pay attention to this:

Total Government Gross Debt (% of GDP) for Japan in year 2010 is 225.853 %. (Meaning – how will they pay for all those exports of BC lumber they’ll need to rebuild?)

As a comparison, the Total Government Gross Debt for Iceland in year 2010 is 115.575 %. And, they are emerging from bankruptcy.

What happens when Japan defaults – which may be more than likely due to the aftermath of the earthquake/tsunami?