Canadian Politics

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

11 minutes ago, gcn11 said:

Common knowledge. No offense, but find it yourself. Everyone knows that the whole province needed to be redone with fibre optic and only a very small portion of it had been done. I am, of course, referring to the original privitization of MTS. Billions were needed to do so with very little realistic hope of cost recovery. CBC links? Good god....might as well ask the NDP to write it themselves.

Couldn't find anything to corroborate with what you said- common knowledge or not, your statement is just anecdotal.

The price to upgrade was artificially inflated to facilitate the privatization of MTS- everyone knows this, it's how you do business. 

[pigseye]

Ask anybody who bought MTS stock after it privatized, they're very happy with the results. 

[pigseye]

Just now, wanna-b-fanboy said:

The price to upgrade was artificially inflated to facilitate the privatization of MTS- everyone knows this, it's how you do business. 

Which is why the company sold for less than market value at the time. 

[FrostyWinnipeg]

Crown corps don't need to make big profit which is why we like em.

[pigseye]

Some of you may be too young to remember but I can remember paying $300 - 400/month in long distance bills when we lived in a rural Manitoba area. Then the market opened to competition and within 5 years our rates were down to under $10/month. 

[The Unknown Poster]

56 minutes ago, gcn11 said:

Apples and oranges. MTS required a multi-billion dollar technology upgrade just to continue operating. We have already spent the billions on Hydro.

Who would buy hydro now anyway?   Ive always heard Sasktel used as the example of a crown that did just fine.

[JCon]

8 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Who would buy hydro now anyway?   Ive always heard Sasktel used as the example of a crown that did just fine.

Make it public. Use the IPO to pay down the debt. 

[GCn20]

25 minutes ago, pigseye said:

Some of you may be too young to remember but I can remember paying $300 - 400/month in long distance bills when we lived in a rural Manitoba area. Then the market opened to competition and within 5 years our rates were down to under $10/month. 

No doubt....and the tech was so bad we were on party lines for gosh sakes. MTS could not compete with the private sector. Simple as that. It was a mercy kill.

[GCn20]

14 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Who would buy hydro now anyway?   Ive always heard Sasktel used as the example of a crown that did just fine.

I agree. Hydro will be a money loser for the next couple decades. Unlike MTS that saw vast reductions in rates when privatized, the only way a buyer gets value for Manitoba Hydro now is with massive rate hikes because of the massive incompetence in cost overruns of construction of the Wuskwatum and Keeyask dams and BiPole 111..

Edited September 20, 2019 by gcn11

[Wideleft]

It's an oversimplification to say that long distance rates went down simply because MTS was privatized. If that were true, Sasktel wouldn't have among the cheapest rates in Canada and corporate rates that are much cheaper than that of Manitoba.

The sale was ideological and the beneficiaries were lined up at the trough waiting for the trigger to get pulled.

 

[pigseye]

29 minutes ago, Wideleft said:

It's an oversimplification to say that long distance rates went down simply because MTS was privatized. If that were true, Sasktel wouldn't have among the cheapest rates in Canada and corporate rates that are much cheaper than that of Manitoba.

The sale was ideological and the beneficiaries were lined up at the trough waiting for the trigger to get pulled.

 

But it's not an over simplification to say we were being gauged by MTS at the time. When you have a monopoly on something you can set your price, economics 101. 

[kelownabomberfan]

Conrad Black: Trudeau's not a racist, just a hypocrite and a weak leader

If the government generally was playing it straight and not trying to gain re-election by defaming its opponents, Trudeau could have expressed regret, claimed he'd learned and moved on
 

Quote

 

The election campaign to date has been an exercise in idiocy and cowardice. It is obviously embarrassing for Justin Trudeau to have had to admit to attending an Aladdin-themed party in 2001 made up to look like Aladdin (although Aladdin was an Arab not an African, and blackening his hands was oddly laborious). But Maxime Bernier is right that Justin is not a racist, just a hypocrite. As Tucker Carlson, the Fox News commentator, said on Thursday night, the prime minister’s conduct is “sort of like finding out your super-sensitive brother-in-law, the one who tells you he’s a feminist, the one who’s always scolding you for your sexism is, in fact, hitting on the babysitter.” The story broke in Time magazine and the spectacle of the United States splitting its sides laughing at a Canadian politician as they did over the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford is distressing to most Canadians. They rejoice in mocking American leaders; the reverse is mortifyingly embarrassing.

In fact, there was probably no intent to mock any racial or ethnic group in the several incidents that have been revealed (after Justin said on Wednesday night that there had only been one other in his life). This propensity for absurd costumes, from Superman and Lawrence of Arabia to the Afro wig and features, and the dreadful fiasco in India where he inflicted subterraneanly silly costumes on his entire family, is affected and worrisome. He was a drama teacher and his father liked exotic costumes and foreign lands, but poncing through India in traditional outfits was like the prime minister of France and his family coming to Canada dressed like Jacques Cartier in frilly shirts and voluminous breeches, buckled shoes and three-cornered felt hats. Justin would not have felt scatologically self-reproachful (“pissed off at myself” will not do as a public reflection from the leader of a serious country), and promised the media that there would be confessions to his children, if the entire Liberal campaign were not a systematic character assassination of Conservative candidates. One candidate at a time and a new one almost every day has been smeared with malicious tittle-tattle and innuendos that Liberal mud-slingers represent as proof of homophobia or misogyny.

The Liberal campaign was planned as Justin was plying the country displaying his sunny ways and avoiding any serious discussion of issues while the Liberal hit squads incinerated the reputations of dozens of respectable Conservative candidates with spurious splicing and decontextualizing tactical slime from outdated remarks. It is all intended to portray reasonable people as monsters, and the Conservative party as led by and composed of feudal reactionaries and superstitious bigots. It is the ultimate hand-me-down of the sleaziest American political skullduggery. This is from the rule-book of leftist 1960s urban guerrilla Saul Alinsky to his acolytes, Hillary Rodham (before she became Mrs. Clinton), Barack Obama and David Axelrod, the mentor of Justin Trudeau’s minder, Gerry Butts. Gerry Butts holds himself out as the continuator of Jack Pickersgill and Jim Coutts, chiefs of staff or close associates of Liberal prime ministers Mackenzie King, Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. They were charming scoundrels but civilized men at the reform edge of the political mainstream.

Butts imported Axelrod to assist in riveting on the back of Ontario for four terms the catastrophic government of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne. Butts took the high jump in the midst of the SNC-Lavalin debacle, but instead of falling on his sword, he was just hiding behind the curtain. He designed a campaign, not of wit and stratagem and agility, as Pickersgill and Coutts did, but a cynical and sinister assault on honest electioneering. This was from the same version of public spiritedness that inspired Justin Trudeau to lie to Parliament about SNC-Lavalin, and prosecuted Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, with no evidence, and tried to starve him into submission, and then folded when show-time came in court, and finally bought the admiral’s discretion with hush money. The former commander of the Royal Canadian Navy committed the sin of trying to prevent the navy from degenerating into a coastal force with no ocean-going capacity. A government that would treat a patriotic officer with an unblemished career who worked his way up through 33 years in the navy so nastily cannot run an honest election campaign.

Here is the problem. Justin Trudeau is, as I have written here before, a pleasant and benign man, but not a strong leader, and his minders have a little of the complacent charm of the old Liberal wheel-horses and fixers, but they are hard, morally corrupt, cynical men practicing the politics of smash and grab, to hell with the practical consequences. Foreign investment in Canada has declined by 75 per cent in five years while Canadian capital investment in foreign countries has approximately tripled. The storm signals are everywhere and the bell is tolling, and this government’s re-election program is to destroy the official opposition with false charges of racist, sexist and sectarian malice. It is an evil campaign. Justin isn’t the author of it, but he can’t escape responsibility for it.

 

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/election-2019/conrad-black-trudeaus-not-a-racist-just-a-hypocrite-and-a-weak-leader

[kelownabomberfan]

[kelownabomberfan]

[The Unknown Poster]

8 hours ago, pigseye said:

Ask anybody who bought MTS stock after it privatized, they're very happy with the results. 

The company had a program to lend employees money to buy stocks. They were very happy. 

[Mark H.]

18 hours ago, gcn11 said:

Common knowledge. No offense, but find it yourself. Everyone knows that the whole province needed to be redone with fibre optic and only a very small portion of it had been done. I am, of course, referring to the original privitization of MTS. Billions were needed to do so with very little realistic hope of cost recovery. 

Most of the fibre optic trunks in the province are owned by Manitoba Hydro - are they not? 

[Mark H.]

17 hours ago, kelownabomberfan said:

Let's just cut to the chase and leave it at that.

They would be roasting Stephen Harper on a spit right now if they had ever found anything like this - we all know it. 

[The Unknown Poster]

Harper was roasted because he shook his sons hand at school drop off. 

Buddy last night telling me JT was wrong but we have to understand the times. I said it was the 2000’s. He said yeah but look at how he was raised. You have to understand he was the product of his upbringing. 

I said what about Scheer? He said no his views are gross. I said well what if his views were determined by his upbringing?  And my buddy almost went cross eyed thinking about it. 

Point is...we should all ask ourselves “if it was my guy how would I feel?”  

The defending or “understanding” of JT is really disappointing to me. He should be toast. Don’t like Scheer? Vote for NDP. But don’t give JT a pass because he’s a rich white guy who didn’t know better. 

[Mark H.]

17 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Harper was roasted because he shook his sons hand at school drop off. 

Buddy last night telling me JT was wrong but we have to understand the times. I said it was the 2000’s. He said yeah but look at how he was raised. You have to understand he was the product of his upbringing. 

I said what about Scheer? He said no his views are gross. I said well what if his views were determined by his upbringing?  And my buddy almost went cross eyed thinking about it. 

Point is...we should all ask ourselves “if it was my guy how would I feel?”  

The defending or “understanding” of JT is really disappointing to me. He should be toast. Don’t like Scheer? Vote for NDP. But don’t give JT a pass because he’s a rich white guy who didn’t know better. 

The hypocrisy and imagined morality from BOTH PARTIES is hard to comprehend, much less stomach.

[FrostyWinnipeg]

2 hours ago, Mark H. said:

Let's just cut to the chase and leave it at that.

They would be roasting Stephen Harper on a spit right now if they had ever found anything like this - we all know it. 

At this point the best they can hope for is a minority which I think would give us 4 years of peace rather then the usual 2. 

A CP minority would end as soon as they axed the carbon tax.

Just when you thought they survived SNCL.

[kelownabomberfan]

if history continues to repeat itself, Trudeau Jr. will win a minority in his second term, after a huge majority in his first term.  Trudeau will then look for the first sign of weakness in the Conservatives, and call an election as soon as it is politically expedient for him to get a majority.  Trudeaus don't like minorities, they want absolute power.  And yes, I know.  They are not unique in this way.

[kelownabomberfan]

On ‎19‎/‎09‎/‎2019 at 7:01 PM, Zontar said:

So Canadian media is going to dig into why Trudeau left that teaching gig in the middle of a semester , right ?

well of course!  But the only media that will try, will be just ignored/pilloried for trying to get to the bottom of the story.  Exhibit A:

 

[Mark H.]

27 minutes ago, kelownabomberfan said:

if history continues to repeat itself, Trudeau Jr. will win a minority in his second term, after a huge majority in his first term.  Trudeau will then look for the first sign of weakness in the Conservatives, and call an election as soon as it is politically expedient for him to get a majority.  Trudeaus don't like minorities, they want absolute power.  And yes, I know.  They are not unique in this way.

I don’t think Scheer will be able to get the NDP onside & topple a Liberal minority, the way Harper could. Those connections do not appear to be there. 

[kelownabomberfan]

4 minutes ago, Mark H. said:

I don’t think Scheer will be able to get the NDP onside & topple a Liberal minority, the way Harper could. Those connections do not appear to be there. 

no the only one who would topple a minority would be the Liberals themselves forcing an election, kind of how like Harper conned the NDP/Libs into a non-confidence vote back in 2011.

[GCn20]

12 hours ago, Mark H. said:

Most of the fibre optic trunks in the province are owned by Manitoba Hydro - are they not? 

Why would Hydro need fibre optics. MTS just used the hydro right of ways.