1. The Foreign Investment Review Act is a paper tiger. Basically wallpaper. About as useful as environmental regulations for the tar sands.

2. EMD was given 5 million in tax breaks in 2008 plus other incentives. Shortly thereafter, in 2010, Caterpillar bought the plant. There is a clear link between the two events.
3. Corporations find loopholes to donate to and fundraise for political parties. Corporations spent $20 BILLION on lobbying in Canada last year. I don’t have that kind of money to avoctate my positions
4, The corporate mind-set is so powerful, that people associate the words “union” or “social programs” as being negative.
5. The WORST and most dangerous LIE of all, though, is the one involving human-caused global warming. People are dying, and we are complicit.

6. People are also dying downstream of the Tar Sands, and we are complicit.
7. The steel industry in Canada is almost dead. Corporate tax cuts clearly didn’t have a positive impact there either.
8. Our current federal government (and the federal Liberals are not much different) is ideologically driven. They have blinders on.

Like John, I lean right of centre, but to be fair to McGuinty, he Has shown great leadership with his Green Energy Act. Yes, he could have done it better, but he did it, and we’ll all have better health with cleaner air, water & soil because he’s closing most of our coal-fired generation.

The nub of our problem is Health vs Energy vs Jobs:
- our Jobs come from selling to the USA & competing with their companies.
- Ontario health care is paid from Taxes, while people & companies pay privately in the USA
- McGuinty’s trying to transfer Health costs from our Taxes to our Hydro bills by replacing/reducing Coal with Wind, Solar, conservation, etc.
- everyone in Niagara knows what happens if McGuinty drives our Hydro rates too high => we’ll lose employers who will move away … to the USA where they produce electricity from Coal, cheaply.

Niagara lost Inco, Welmet, Union Carbide, Atlas, Horton Steel, Nabisco, GM and many more as they equalised the power rates to favour Toronto when Pickering Nuclear came on stream ~1975. We’re still paying for the Stranded Debt from building those Nuclear plants and … they’re ready to be replaced. Wait til you see our power rates then! We’d better hope all of this Green Energy works well 7 cheaply in 10 years, or we won’t have jobs and won’t be able to afford to live in Ontario.

However, about that time, I saw a blog comment at the British newspaper Independent Online, which mentioned a log-book report from a ~1900 expedition where they had sailed to ~83 degrees N.

What would have caused the ice to melt so high in the Arctic 100 years ago with only 1B people? Certainly not the amount of CO2 that we produce today with 7B people who have cleared so many more forests.
-w-

What’s your response to the CERN scientists confirmation of the Danish theory that climate change is caused by cosmic rays striking atmospheric dust and creating cloud seeds that generate low clouds which reflect heat. The number of cosmic rays striking the atmosphere is affected by the amount of solar electro-magnetic-field striking Earth; we see this mainly as sunspots, which have apparently been reduced in the past decade….

I believe I’ve posted the URL for the original YouTube video of the Danish scientists on NAL, about a year before the confirming CERN experiments occurred.

It’s one thing to predict Climate Change,
another to find the Cause,
yet another to Adapt to it.
-w-

BTW, the Russian arctic methane plume articles were quite interesting.
Again, since there is no ‘recorded history’ on them, Many questions arise: – Have they just begun in 2011?
- Have they been around forever, or do they happen every year, unnoticed?
- Are they increasing in frequency or volume?

While I generally support your intent to reward corporations who locate/stay here, remember that it was Tariff Wars in the 1930′s that worsened the Great Depression. Are we about to undergo a similar Jobs War and risk creating the Greater Depression today?

The Yanks began it in 2009 with their Stimulus package which required everything to be ‘Made in USA’ regardless of NAFTA. I almost started a blog to encourage Canadians to to co-operate with the Yanks by Avoiding American products (we wouldn’t need a fancy law – we’d just buy Moroccan oranges, travel to Jamaica instead of Florida, etc.)
-w-

If Corporations give extra money to their executives to donate personally, they have to pay them the money to donate, which is then taxed. As well, you assume that those executives aren’t already donating to a political party, and therefore have no further room to donate. Our Election Canada laws are very tight and well regulated – ask any local who belongs to their party’s riding association.

Wonder what Caterpillar did promise under FIRA when they bought Electromotive from GM? Would you mind providing your reference URL for Harper “…granting a company [Electromotive] millions of dollars in tax breaks with no strings attached”?
-w-

At least one other piece of info is way off Doug:
Chrétien abolished the ability of big corporations & big unions to donate to political parties about 10 years ago. The Tories have the largest number of average people donating of any party in Canada – they’ve become the party of Main Street, as the Liberals once were.
-w-

I just read an article from 2010 where the CEO of Air Canada lamented that this large corporation (15th largest airline in the world, from a country that is 37th largest) was paying $1B !!! more in taxes/airport rental/no subsidies/etc than if it were located in the USA.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/09/21/air-canada-chief-weighs-into-potash-controversy/
He also lamented, “Interestingly enough, we emerged with one gaping question – why is it that culturally and maybe philosophically, Canada and Canadians have a way of tearing down business success stories rather than proactively building global champions.”

Remember, Companies can Move to other countries, Employees canNot.
New York State’s minimum wage is $7.50 while Ontario’s is $10.50. We’d better have some other things going for us, or our only employers will soon be government….

As Canucks, we must do everything we can to encourage companies to both locate and stay here – in exchange for giving us jobs that have provide good quality of life with proper laws about health, education, labour and ecology.