So Michael Ignatieff has decided to give up on Alberta when it comes to elections. He is taking a stand against oil tankers of the BC coast, proposing a ban on such tankers.    The Liberals clarified:

Ms. Murray indicated the Liberals are against large supertankers and not the many other ships that sail B.C. waters. The Liberals don’t oppose the smaller tankers carrying a light oil called condensate that already ply the choppy waters of Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound around Haida Gwaii.

The Liberals also did not take a stand on the oil tankers that sail past downtown Vancouver and Stanley Park taking crude from a facility in Burnaby, a terminus of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline from Alberta.

So they aren’t against all tankers.  Just additional tankers that would carry more export oil from Alberta from the proposed Gateway Pipeline terminal at Kitimat.  This pipeline is expected to provide an additional outlet for Alberta’s production, which may somewhat decouple Alberta prices from US demand by providing additional markets.  Isn’t it the Liberals that created the “Team Canada” missions to help Canadian businesses expand to markets other than the United States?

So, by deciding that exporting more of Alberta’s oil is bad, does Ignatieff expect to win any seats in Wild Rose Country?

Nothing like destroying the incentive to work hard and save for your own retirement…

In Victoria Friday Mr. Flaherty fanned the flames further when he told executives that citizens who have saved enough for retirement will eventually be asked to help those who haven’t.

So, what you are saying is that if I save lots of money for retirement and have a nice nest-egg – that is my net worth is a large positive number – that I will have to pay more in taxes so that those people who chose not to save money are not destitute?   Exactly how is that fair?  This sounds like the socialist version of the Grasshopper and the Ant…

Has Flaherty suddenly switched to the NDP???

Jim Flaherty, the Canadian federal finance minister, has posited in a letter to his Ontario counterpart, that perhaps the premiums that all Canadian workers (and their employers) pay should be increased to increase the amount of money Canadians are saving for retirement.

This is a very bad idea.

First, increasing payroll taxes is a known employment killer.  Employing people costs companies more, so they have an incentive to reduce hiring.

Second, the CPP is a backstop pension plan.  The amount of money I would ever recover from CPP is not really enough for anyone to live on – so no one should rely solely on it anyway.

Third, the CPP is a giant Ponzi scheme ( less now than it used to be).  The money I put in is not being invested for my future retirement.  Much of my contributions  will be used to pay the pensions of the boomers.  Work out the rate of return on maximum CPP contributions versus maximum benefit, considering 30 years of paying in and 30 years of withdrawls (assuming long life) – it’s terrible (like <3% terrible), because it’s a scam.

Fourth, while the advent of the CPPIB is an improvement over the  true Ponzi scheme it was until the early 2000′s, I do not trust the governments of the future to keep their hands off it.  As the CPPIB fund becomes a massive sovereign wealth fund, many politicians will want to use it’s financial power to invest in ill-advised pet projects.

So, Mr. Flaherty – don’t do it.  Doubling the allowable RRSP contribution limits would be better.

The Government of Canada is proposing to purchase 65 F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft from Lockheed-Martin, to replace the now 30 year old CF-18 fleet.

Boeing, who lost the Joint Strike Fighter competition (their X-37 was rejected by the Pentagon when compared to Lockheed-Martin’s X-35), is trying to sell us the now 15 year old F-18F Super Hornet, which will be a 22 year old design when the F-35 is available.

Note that the F-18F is a stopgap aircraft that the US Navy is using to replace the 1970s era F-14′s with until the F-35C is available.

And since Canada has already invested $160 Million on the F-35 development program (and committed much more), it would be silly to back away now.  Plus, if the UK and US are buying this airplane, it would make sense to share a platform.

Now – if the F-35 does fail to live up to it’s promise (as sometimes new designs do), we should put into the contract with LM that we have an out.  Or that they would supply us with the F-22 instead (for a discount).

Yet another example of interprovincial trade restrictions that exist for no reason other than to prevent competition and create work for government bureaucrats.

Contemporary Security Canada, which also provided private security for the Vancouver Olympic Games, was selected by the RCMP to provide approximately 1,100 private security guards to screen pedestrians throughout the summits in Huntsville and Toronto.

But security guards and the companies they work for are required by provincial law to be licensed, and the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services said Contemporary Security Canada is not currently approved.

Wait - a company that can do work in BC (and by extension Alberta and Saskatchewan via TILMA, I assume) needs to do extra paperwork and wait for the Ontario government to approve them?  Why doesn’t Ontario simply accept that BC is a reasonably equivalent jurisdiction?

Ms. Blondeau said the ministry is working to do background checks on the company and the security guards they have hired for the high-profile international event. But she said they found out about the issue only after the company was hired.

“My understanding is that the RCMP has a long-standing relationship with this company,” she said. “So they secured them and we found out about it after the fact. It’s an inconvenience.”

Wait - so the RCMP uses this firm a lot (and thus trusts them), but now we need the provincial government to approve them too?  Since the RCMP is spending the money here, on behalf of the federal government, why is it necessary to have another level of government involved in the transaction?

The company must pay a fee and go through a rigorous process to become a licensed agency, and Ms. Blondeau said they will be able to work at the summits only if they are approved.

“If they are an agency that is approved to do business in Ontario, then they can proceed,” she said.

And bureaucracy stifles business some more…

All the parties in Canada’s Parliament are wrong on whether to let the Auditor General do a performance audit of MPs expenses.  First because the A-G office has in the past performed such audits (1980 and 1991), but because we know from other jurisdictions (the UK being the most recent and egregious), an awful lot can be hidden.

So the decision of Parliament to reject the A-G’s request is tantamount to admitting they have something to hide…

Yesterday, there was a report in the Winnipeg Free Press, quoting the Minister of State for Agriculture, Jean-Pierre Blackburn:

“There is a need for new markets for the food sector like any other sector,” he told The Canadian Press. “But at the same time we know some specific aspects have to be protected.”

He said supply management allowed dairy and poultry industries to remain among the most profitable and stable in Canada.

“Here in Canada, supply management works,” said the minister.

“If we open our borders there will be huge difficulties for these sectors. There would need to be changes for the way we do things. And we’re functioning very well in Canada.”

“It’s part of the Conservative government’s tradition, to be close to the farmers,” he said.

Coudl the good Minister please tell me how protecting Canadian consumers from lower prices is good?

Could the good minister please explain why protecting our farmers from competition and preventing them from competing on the world market is good?  Does he not know that when Australia and New Zealand ditched their supply management system, they became some of the largest exporters of these products?

Supply management doesn’t work for Canadians, unless you are a farmer already in the system.  And that seems like a small group of people benefiting at the expense of the rest of us.

Prof. Ignatieff is proposing that the government get MORE involved in the production and sale of food in Canada, to help farmers, help Canadians eat healthier, and improve exports…

Wait, one of the reasons why many Canadian agricultural products aren’t exported is because of the supply management systems that make Canadian dairy, poultry and eggs uncompetitive on the world market.

And past government “help” for farmers has meant higher prices for Canadian consumers – so I want no part of this.

And Kevin Libin showed months ago in the National Post that local produce often has a higher GHG footprint than food from distant locales simply because growing some produce in Canada is inefficient.

Mr. Ignatieff – get out of the way and let the free market do the job it does best.

I do not often agree with Jeffrey Simpson, but he is bang on with his polemic against supply management and how Canada is being shut out of international free trade negotiations by our fanatical defense of poultry, egg and dairy farm protection.

As I have always said, supply management simply protects Canadians from lower prices.  It is time for Ottawa to banish this from the land.  New Zealand and Australia have shown the way to greater prosperity for these industries by allowing them to compete on the world stage.

While this issue has been hashed over a lot, I felt it was necessary to put in my view.

The Own the Podium program has been a huge success, with Canada winning more gold medals than any other country has ever won at the Winter Olympics.  While we didn’t win the most total medals (the USA and Germany bested us there), who cares which country that won the most bronze medals?

The Own the Podium program was successful for exactly the reason apologies were being offered a week ago.  The push to be the best is what gave us success.  I suspect that Canadians and the Canadian Olympic Committee are happier today with this success than anyone predicted.

While it was heartbreaking to see Mellissa Hollingsworth break down after her failed attempt at skeleton, one cannot fault her dedication to succeed.  Sometimes you have to put everything on the line to win, and in endeavours where hundredths of a second count it doesn’t always work.  Ms. Hollingsworth, Devon Kershaw (50 km x-country) and the alpine team’s failures to win medals wasn’t because they didn’t try.  It was because they were unwilling to settle for anything less than a gold.  I have great pride in all our athletes at these games (and all the volunteers who made it successful).

I am disappointed in those commentators and officials with the COC who felt it was necessary a week ago to apologize and be critical of our performances to that point.   From the beginning, the expectation was that Canada’s best chances for medals were in the final days.  Did they have to be so stereotypically Canadian that we had to question our motives and methods before the job was even done?  We are the greatest country in the world.  We have the potential to be better.  We won more gold medals at the Winter Olympics that Germany and the United States, who have 3 and 10 times our population respectively.

We owned the podium.  Stop apologizing.