What's hot in real world news?

[Kevin Pacey]

One issue Canada has is a sub-optimal constitution, particularly when it comes to provincial-federal interactions and the Senate (not to mention a judicial system, collection of universities and bureaucracy that seem heavily stocked with leftists currently, still). On the former, trouble building essential pipelines is perhaps a prime example. Justin Trudeau might choose to act with more vigor if he really does want pipeline(s) built, though (arguably at best unclear, with his advisor being Gerald Butts, an ex-WWF Canada President & CEO who earlier drove the Green Energy policy in Ontario when advising the now defunct Liberal goverment there) - the Feds have jurisdiction law on their side, in a perfect world. Two provinces have especially hypocritical positions in opposing the building of them, in Western and Eastern Canada respectively - said provinces have in the past blatantly ignored environmental concerns when it was to their own benefit to do so.

On the Senate, Australia in contrast to us has equal representation among all of its provinces. In Canada, said Eastern province of my first paragraph would never agree to allowing that, owing to losing some of its influence in this body as a result. This may well be contributing to certain provinces remaining relative backwaters indefinitely. Merger of the Century by Diane Francis, something of a (seriously intended) fantasy read on the possibility of a union between the US and Canada, does some interesting comparisons of both countries to other nations, including of Canada to Australia.

Meanwhile, it's unclear to me how deep the roots of communism are in Canada. The old newspaper article How the Communists took control, circa 1971, can be found on the internet. It argues (with some evidence) that Pierre Trudeau started out as a communist, then realized he never would come to power unless he ran for the Liberal party federally. Both he and his son Justin have expressed admiration for China and Cuba's leaders and systems. Btw, at least 4 people in our Board's community (B.A., B.G., N.H. and P.M.) have admitted by their own words to liking communism over the years, as seen on chesstalk, while a high number were taken to socialists (NDP) as was evidenced by an old chesstalk poll, that I myself did not take. Socialism is merely a step on the road to full communism, as far as Marx was concerned, fwiw. Worldwide, communism may still be a far greater menace than terrorism, at least in the long term.

IMHO, Canada could be far better than it currently is (even though we're stuck with a sub-optimal constitution [at least for now]), if only we had a better collection of politicians and informed voters on average (can you say [re-]introduce Judeo-Christian morality and civics classes?). Canada has plenty of resources and arable land (albeit a lower % than the US) with plenty of room for expansion of industry and infrastructure, besides for properly planned significant increases of its population. The idea of an oppressive, cash-grabbing and economically-crippling carbon tax is especially ridiculous to apply within this country (even if one believes global climate change is occurring and is manmade), as Canada's contribution to world carbon-based pollution is negligible - not only that, but because we have so many trees, we absorb a significant portion of the world's carbon - we should be rewarded for that in any such international wealth redistribution scheme, instead!