December 3, 2008

Annals of Great Timing

Boring Canada, with its penchant for being boring, has had a boring mortgage system (including such anachronisms as down payments) and an immigration system that is publicly committed to improving the economic welfare of current Canadians. So, it's economy has been boringly non-catastrophic recently.

Of course, that can't last with its main trading partner going down the tubes. With recession looming in Canada, you might think that the out of power parties would be happy to see the weak minority conservative government wrestle with the economy and absorb the blame. But, no, the the left of center Liberals have formed a coalition with the leftist New Democrats, and have made a deal with the secessionist Bloc Quebecois, to take power. Colby Cosh has details.

UPDATE: Alternatively, the Canadian Left and the secessionists see the coming economic crunch as an opportunity to spend vast amounts of made-up money on their political bases.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

18 comments:

Unknown said...

Can you tell us why boring Iceland had a meltdown?

Anonymous said...

Of course the Left wants power now. The worse the economy, the better their plans to nationalize everything sound.

Anonymous said...

The Canadian Left is like the American left. Just like in the US, they'll dish out taxpayer money but they won't demand real equity in return. In other words wealthy people will get a bailout and the taxpayers will get nothing. Nationalisation and dilution of common stock would be far preferable to purchases of preferred stock, unless you really believe that public is actually going to get significant dividends over the long haul, which I don't consider likely.

Anonymous said...

There was a near total blackout in the US media of the recent center-right Harper win up in Canada.

And now there is almost zero reporting of winner Harper being shoved out of power by the Left even though it's described as a "crisis" in Canada.

Google the single word "canada" and then click on the news link at the top of the results page and you will get a list of articles that all use the term "crisis" in the headline.

Here is the direct link:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=canada&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn&oi=property_suggestions&resnum=0&ct=property-revision&cd=2

On the other hand the inane doings of Merkel, Blair, Brown, Sarkozy etc. are always "news" in the American media.

The leftwing media controllers form an international network and they want compartmentalization of news within each country that is potentially damaging to The Cause of global socialism.

Anonymous said...

As with our own fading land, it doesn't matter who the figurehead is in Canada, doesn't matter who the silly "reigning" party is. Canada - whatever that means - teeters on the brink of putting guys like Steve into boring prison cells.

jeppo said...

"..an immigration system that is publicly committed to improving the economic welfare of current Canadians."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

So that's what those packs of Somalis are doing all day long at my local coffee shop--improving my economic welfare! Yup, I suspected it had something to do with "welfare".

Anonymous said...

an immigration system that is publicly committed to improving the economic welfare of current Canadians.

You mean all those Tamils, Sikhs, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Jamaican gang members, Asian triads, etc.? What exactly is their economic value-added?

Anonymous said...

I doubt the Canadian immigration system in practice is that much different from the American system.

The main difference is that they don't have a 2000 mile border with Mexico, with thousands of Central America's poor running across every day. They get lots of third worlder's, but at least they're third worlder's that can afford a $2,000 plane ticket and visa. That actually is a significant difference.

Anonymous said...

It's not about left and right it's about ethnicity. The separatists are Catholic and French and reside almost exclusively in the Province of Quebec. Since the conquest, over three hundred years ago, the main focus of the French was la survival or in Frank Salter's terms promoting their ethnic genetic interests. Thus the French employ a block voting strategy.

The Liberals are a rump party supported mainly by visible minorities and Catholics (think two phases of immigrants) living mostly in Toronto and it's surrounds. The current Liberal leader, Dion, was put in the party's leadership role largely because of factional delegate voting blocks of Sikhs and Muslims.

The Conservative Party is largely a WASP/Nordic Protestant party.

150 years later J.S. Mill's admonition still stands.

"Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist."

Anonymous said...

"Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist."

What happens when united public opinion is in favor of the destruction of the nation?

Anonymous said...

What is interesting to me about this is Stephen Harper's response to the crisis.

I assumed he would point out to the Canadian public that Canada has relatively low unemployment, the (supposedly) strongest banking system in the world, and is in so much better shape than the country's main trading partners - especially the basket case to the south.

Yet instead of emphasising the need to stay the course avoiding political turmoil at this time of financial crisis around the world he decided to go on an all out offensive against the opposition for forming a government that would be dependent on the votes of Quebec 'separatists' (or 'sovereigntists' when Harper's speaking French). By doing this he is alienating French-speaking Quebecers in general, not just separatists.

This means: 1) Harper's so desperate to hang on he's gone the scorched earth route; and/or, 2) he's decided that given what little he's got out of pandering to the French of Quebec for the last couple of years to try to whip up an English Canadian backlash to increase Conservative Party support outside of Quebec to make up for the loss of Quebec seats in the next election. This would work only if the proposed coalition government becomes a disaster thus tarnishing the Liberal 'brand' in the parts of Canada that still vote for them over the Conservatives.

All in all it doesn't look good for Harper...but stranger things have happened

Anonymous said...

The Canadian Left is like the American left. Just like in the US, they'll dish out taxpayer money but they won't demand real equity in return. In other words wealthy people will get a bailout and the taxpayers will get nothing.

Why would the Left bail out wealthy people, and how did they infiltrate the Bush Administration (Obama, you may have noticed, has not been sworn in yet)?

Anonymous said...

Since I'm from Quebec allow me to pitch in :
French quebeckers do not really vote as a block , although they almost all care very deeply about remaining culturally francophones (nothing wrong with that really ). The Bloc usually gathers about 40% of the vote in a province that is about 85% french canadian so there's about half of them not voting for the Bloc or the Parti Quebecois. In fact, were the french canadians of one mind on this issue, they'd have won their referendums ages ago.

The current conservative government blundered. They just got reelected as a minority government (meaning that though they are in charge, they really can't do *anything* they want). Stephen Harper *very foolishly* tried to behave as if he really could do anything he wanted.
Even if the conservative government survives this crisis, Mr Harper will have to pay for this and that's unfortunate, since I kind of liked the guy. He utterly underestimated the strength of the opposition parties and tried to get their federal funding for elections cut off. This move , coming from a minority government was basically *insane* . Now canadians have to contend with NDP ( socialist basically) ministers even though they gather like 15% of the vote, maybe..

Anonymous said...

The commodity boom had something to do with Canada's recent prosperity; the commodity crash is having the opposite effect.

Anonymous said...

Concerned,
It was the banks. Anyway, Iceland gets 80% of its heating from natural geysers, grow 90% of their won veggies in hot-houses and has plenty of fish. On top they have some hydro-power plants and no hassle with foreigners who need copious AA to not riot. So I suspect they will get over this fairly quickly once they have arranged timelines with their Russian and European creditors. The meltdown is going to hit those countries the hardest that have lots of diversity and AA recipients. The other countries will adjust and collectively (everybody has the same idea) pull through fast.

Anonymous said...

Canada [as we knew it] will effectively cease to exist within the next ten or fifteen years - the nihilists in Canada simply aren't making any babies.

Already the city of Toronto is effectively Muslim:

Explosive, super-secret Toronto demography report
spengler.atimes.net

Here are some sample Canadian Total Fertility Rates [TFRs], which are pretty much in line with what you'd expect if you were aware of the overwhelming stranglehold which nihilism is exerting on the peoples of the Pacific Rim:

Report on the Demographic Situation in Canada
128 PAGE PDF FILE
statcan.ca

Report on the Demographic Situation in Canada

PDF PAGE 17
DOCUMENT PAGE 5

Arab-Canadian TFR: 2.60
Aboriginal-Canadian TFR: 2.60
Ontario TFR: ~1.50
Korean-Canadian TFR: 1.30
Chinese-Canadian TFR: 1.23
Japanese-Canadian TFR: 1.18

Compare:

List of countries and territories by fertility rate
en.wikipedia.org

Anonymous said...

Lucius Vorenus might not be aware that two-thirds of Arab Canadians are Christian, primarily Orthodox and eastern Catholic (Melkite Maronite). The greater part of Muslims here are South Asian (India & Pakistan) in origin.

Anonymous said...

oursonpolaire: Lucius Vorenus might not be aware that two-thirds of Arab Canadians are Christian, primarily Orthodox and eastern Catholic (Melkite Maronite).

Do you have an sources [preferably URLs] which you could cite for that assertion?

Thanks!