Weekly Bulletin #6

Unlike the past week, there have been a number of issues that have occurred this week, so I will discuss a few of them and give my own frank opinion on them. Coming up soon is the Copenhagen summit on climate change, which our PM after all will be attending as will Obama. Canada certainly should be there and would should take climate change more seriously than our PM does, but our actions should be based on our national interest, not what other countries think we should do. Melting ice, possible habitat damage do make it in our national interest to take action, but with a large natural resource industry, a cold climate, and much of the country living in remote rural areas, trying to achieve the cuts that most European countries have committed to is both unrealistic and unreasonable. As a sovereign country, we have every right to decide what is best for our country even if others don't like it. In terms of any agreement, we should keep an open mind and sign it if it serves our national interest while refuse to sign it if does not. Some may say as a country we have a global obligation to take action. I would disagree, our obligation is primarily to our own country. I don't begrudge other countries for putting their national interest first and I think Canada should do the same. Otherwise in sum, I think the current Tory government is doing too little in climate change, but I think what the environmentalists are asking us to do is too much. We need to find some balance in between. Besides, we as individuals can make an impact on our own, dealing with climate change doesn't always have to mean bigger government.

The other summit this week is the Commonwealth one. While I support scrapping the monarchy, I do believe the Commonwealth is still a useful forum for Canada to belong to and go place for dialogue. Recently one of its members, Uganda has brought in a draconian anti-gay law. Besides the fact that the law is absolutely outrageous in every way possible, the question becomes, do we have the right to comment on what is a domestic issue. I would argue in this case we do as this does impact Canada. If any gay person or person who supports gay rights wishes to claim refugee status, we would have no choice but to accept them and as we rightfully should. However, processing refugee claims is very costly and whether they will be a net contributor or a net user of our system varies and unlike skilled immigration where we ensure only those who are net contributors get in, here it is decided based on one having a well founded fear of persecution. On the issue of gay marriage, that is an internal issue and we should stay out of other's countries business on that issue, but this goes beyond a simple policy issue, this is blatant human rights violation. I do fully support gay marriage myself, but realize that attitudes on this vary from country to country. I am not sure what is the best course of action here, but suspension from the Commonwealth to possible sanctions should be considered. Perhaps recalling the ambassador as a sign of protest is one possibility. Another one is to declare the extraterritorality null and void, otherwise if a Ugandan national breaks the law while in Canada, we will not assist in any way shape or form in helping them prosecute them nor we will recognize the law as legitimate.

The other big issue is the Tories plan to pass enabling legislation for the HST, but it will not be a confidence vote. I personally support the HST despite its unpopularity and believe it is the right move. The GST in the early 90s was extremely unpopular, yet had it not been for the GST and NAFTA, it is unlikely we would have been able to balance the budget and enjoy the prosperity and growth we did. However, rises in sales taxes should be offset by cuts in income and corporate taxes as cutting both of those taxes would help encourage economic growth. With large deficits at both the provincial and federal level, I would argue raising sales taxes makes the most sense. In fact I would support raising the GST to 10% to fight the deficit and I also think the Tories move to cut the GST to 5% was a populist and economically unsound move. In addition, the HST won't be a totally bad thing for consumers, in fact in the three Atlantic provinces that adopted it, consumers actually save more. The reason for this is the PST is levied on all goods subject to it regardless of what point in the production chain it is in, whereas the GST and the HST are only levied on the final purchase. This means, the amount one pays indirectly in PST is actually much higher, thus meaning there is a high hidden cost. It is also important to remember 29 out of the 30 OECD countries have a value added tax, the United States being the only one that does not. I would argue introducing one would be a wise move to balance the budget while cutting income and corporate taxes, but thats a different topic. If we want to stay competitive, this is definitely worth doing. In fact most economist estimate it will create around 600,000 jobs in Ontario and 200,000 jobs in British Columbia. For all those claiming a recession is no time to do this, I would argue the exact opposite; with rising unemployment any policy that is sound and creates jobs should be adopted. I hope all parties provincially and federally look at whats right in the long-term not whats popular in the short-term. I can tell you it will hit my wallet, but I also realize I will save on many other items too and I also know that more jobs being created means more consumers and this will mean higher wages and salaries for those employed so I might be hurt by it directly, but indirectly I will benefit as I think most will.

The final issue is the issue of the Afghanistan torture. I don't know the details and think pointing fingers is inappropriate until we get all the facts. However, we should remember, Afghanistan is a hardly a liberal democracy with a stellar human rights record, so this should not come as a surprise. So the question is, why the heck are we there in the first place. This wouldn't prevent the torture from happening, but at least our hands would be clean. If anything, this should just give us more reason to pull out ASAP. I don't condone the Taliban, but unless they attack or threaten us directly we have no reason to be there. As for the terrorist, they are in many countries, in fact more are in Pakistan than Afghanistan yet we wouldn't dare attack them. In the case of fighting terrorism, we should go after the terrorists individually, not the whole country. Also some Western countries have home grown terrorism too. Three of the four London bombers in 2005 where born in the United Kingdom and some of the ones that have threatened the West are nationals of countries such as France, Germany, and Britain, yet we would never attack them and nor should we.