Larger landfills

I think I would prefer larger landfills instead of many small landfills. It seems you get economies of scale that make it cheaper to flare or generate electrical power from methane emissions, or to monitor and deal with leachate.

Effect of Carbon Tax on the Poor

A simple reason why a carbon tax should not be dismissed because of concerns about whether the poor will be shielded from the costs of the tax is the following: Any carbon tax is, at most, comparable to the increase and fluctuations that have already occurred in the price of energy from fossil fuels in the last few years. Whether or not there is a carbon tax, we already have the need to protect the poor from escalating energy costs. Let's go ahead and set up such a shield (such as a per head income where any leftover amount could be retained if a person figured out how not to spend the whole amount on fossil fuel energy), and not let it be a show-stopper for an important tool to reduce fossil fuel consumption.

Dion and Layton are critics of the government, loyal to the crown

Letter to the Editor, The Kingston Whig-Standard

I must protest one section of Mr. Bryan Paterson’s article, “I’m proud to be a Canadian” (The Kingston Whig-Standard, July 12, 2007) in which he tells of hearing of the deaths of six Canadian soldiers, and explains how the sacrifices being made by our troops in Afghanistan make him proud to be a Canadian. He goes out of his way to take a shot at the leaders of Canada’s opposition parties, who he claims called for a, “… retreat from Canada’s mission in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the deaths of these soldiers.”

But in fact, Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton have simply been keeping to their respective long-held, principled positions. In particular, on July 4, Mr. Layton held his news conference to reiterate his stand just before the news of the deaths hit the wires (Chantal Hébert, Toronto Star, July 6, 2007).

I’m proud to be a citizen of a country that has members of parliament whose job it is to criticize the government while remaining loyal to the crown. Mr. Paterson mentioned only the, “values of freedom and equality we believe in”. Let us also keep valuing our hard-earned democratic traditions.

Canada's Economic Advantages

On July 5, 2007, Microsoft announced the opening of the Microsoft Canada Development Centre in Vancouver, B.C. (there's a Vancouver in Washington State!) in the fall of 2007. According to S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, “Our goal as a company is to attract the next generation of leading software developers from all parts of the world, and this center will be a beacon for some of that talent.” Phil Sorgen, president of Microsoft Canada, said, “We have long advocated that Canada would be a wonderful place to locate Microsoft development. We have burgeoning high-tech and software industries and a globally envied quality of life, and our cities represent exactly the kind of environment that leading information workers want to live in. This center will help Microsoft remain globally competitive while providing strong economic benefits to British Columbia and Canada.” This press release also noted that, "The Vancouver area is a global gateway with a diverse population, is close to Microsoft’s corporate offices in Redmond and allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S."

I think this is but one example of the kinds of advantages that Canada should be promoting in order to strengthen its economy.

1. Be a place that talented, creative people want to live in, especially our fellow Canadians who might otherwise seek greener pastures abroad.
2. Be welcoming to immigrants from all over the world and make Canada a place where people of different cultural backgrounds live and work well together.
3. Be connected to the rest of the world.
4. Take advantage of dumb moves by other countries: in this case US immigration authorities blindly limiting the number of visas for foreign workers.

Sharing the duty of securing Kandahar

Letter to the Editor, Kingston Whig-Standard

Michael Den Tandt (Growing opposition to Afghan war gives Harper a weapon, The Kingston Whig-Standard, July 6, 2007) criticizes Stéphane Dion’s calling for Canada to rotate out of our combat role in Kandahar in February 2009, and to arrange now for other NATO forces to move into that role. It is clear that Canadian soldiers are working an especially dangerous part of Afghanistan and it is standard practice to rotate units in and out of such a front-line area. But Mr. Den Tandt seems to think that such a rotation would be a, “moral victory for [the insurgents], a public relations bonanza, and ample reason for them to continue with the tactics that are serving them so well.” On the contrary, preparing an orderly rotation of duties between NATO allies and sharing the burden of securing Kandahar could help protect our troops by showing the Taliban insurgents that targeting Canadian soldiers won’t work. They would instead be dealing with the formidable staying power of the entire NATO alliance.

Quiz

What do Mr. Dressup, C. D. Howe, Elizabeth May and Stanley Knowles have in common?

O Canada moment

The CBC recently chose its “Seven Wonders of Canada” after inviting Canadians to submit entries and to cast a vote for their choice. I think my choice would have been Canada’s diversity. We can be proud of the role that the Liberal Party of Canada has played in bringing that about.

Three things about this Wonder stand out to me. The first is that, in Canada, English and French, and Catholic and Protestant more or less managed to live together and build a nation. The second thing is that the resulting institutions that we inherited from Canada’s founders have been built upon to make Canada a multicultural society that includes immigrants from around the world.

The third part of this Wonder is that, 140 years after Confederation, the descendents of one of Canada’s founding people’s, aboriginals, are still, as a group, seriously disadvantaged. The Liberal Party must push the Government of Canada to make the sacrifices to correct this.

Finally I’d like to relate a personal anecdote about Canada’s geographic diversity. I was working in Paris in 1998 and had decided to attend a seminar about European Monetary Union and what might happen to government bonds issued by the different European countries. The subject of this seminar turned out to be the history of bonds issued by a jurisdiction with an economic diversity similar to Europe – the Canadian provinces. For me, that was an “O Canada” moment!