Now, Poisoned Toothpaste

a single case of mad cow disease closed the US border to Canadian beef for over a year. Repeated cases of poisons in Chinese exports and still the goods flow.

One would need to eat a great number of tubes of this stuff to have any effect.

I agree with "pun"dit. It's time to close of all trade of products from China until they demonstrate responsibility and morals in thier practices.
VL

I wonder if the chinese citizens also consume this stuff. It would be no big surprise if they did. When communists go on to trade with the world, the stuff they ship out is usually hastily manufactured (Manufacture 1 million units or be sent to the gulag is probably the rule that the factory operators must abide by) and the quality suffers as a result. To compensate for cutting costs and quality, they tend to use "shortcuts", which can include dangerous ingredients and additives to increase the value of the product without increasing costs, such as the use of melamine. Whenever I hear of communist lovers whining about capitalism, I think that the worst kind of capitalism is that as practiced by communist regimes themselves.

Hmmm... If I were Chinese, I wouldn't brush my teeth either.

First they poison our pets now its our kids what is china up to?

Not very funny Mr. X. Not being a person of Chinese decent myself, I have a unique perspective and ability to put myself in their shoes and understand how hurtful and divisive statement like that post are to their community. Shame on you and shame on me.

There are so many products on the market with ingrediants, or parts, that are manufactured in various countries, shipped to the US and Canada and finished here or repackaged here. Labels then say made in Canada or made in the USA. How can we identify these products, be it food, or knock off auto parts, etc. Time to close the border with China and bring back mfg jobs to Canada. Who is the biggest seller of chinese products in both our countries. And, use baking soda to brush your teeth.

Anyone who knows about JibJab.com knows about "big box store"... If we don't start paying more for goods at home and exporting our own raw resources to third world nations for cheap labour, we're only a few generations away from a total colapes of the west... a bit extreme? we're in the first generation where adults with children today will not be able to excede their parents standard of living...you can no longer buy a home in some places in Canada and expect to do it without family help. We can't afford to have our own children anymore, but we're importing imigrents like theres no tomorrow... Why?? to fill jobs our students and next generation today will be in the unemployment lines tomorrow because of someone willing to work for $2 less will fill.

Another wonderful result of exporting and importing with China...Simply try to find something you can buy today in a regular store that's actually made in Canada or the USA... and you know why you can't find anything made in Canada or the USA???...because we down sized and exported our labour forces... to China, Mexico, India, Dominican, Brazil, Tiawan, Hong Kong, and the Phillipines... In the 70's and 80's they used to say buy American or buy Canadian but because our own insistance of cheaper and better prices we've sold out the middle or working class. But don't get me started on the unions...

I say blame it on our country's obsession with Kyoto. With the threat of increased cost to our industry in Canada to meet unrealisitic CO2 emissions all industry is moving out of town, namely to China where there are no regulations on CO2.(industry is Global, even Potashcorp is investing into SinoChem which is the largest Fertilizer distributor in China)

We now get all our pet food from China, ...Now I hear toothpaste,, and eventually all human food will be next as we are producing our grain to make Ethanol to burn as gas for our cars.. now doesn't that make sense.

Making grain which is our food to essentially make whiskey to burn in our cars..Stupid.

The Scaremongers on Kyoto don't understand economics unless of course their goal is to kill the North American Economy and all our jobs.

The ironic part of this is that over 90% of Greeenhouse gases are Water Vapour... Maybe Suzukli et al.. will start advocating that we should all stop taking showers. I wonder how Dr. Fruitfly would smell after a couple of days trying to reduce GHG's by not showering.

Such is life..

You'll see the borders closed to Chinese goods when pigs learn to fly. Greed triumphs over everything, including common sense.

Mr Ed:

I agree with everything you write up until your last sentence. Don't get you started on the unions? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Unions didn't send jobs outside of North America...corporate greed did that. Free trade and globalization is supposed to be good for us, according to the propaganda spewed by the corporate media. So now you can enjoy your non-union made toothpaste. After you feed your cat.

Seems like melamine that was found in the pet food, found its way into the food that they feed farmed salmons. Guess where this was produced? You got it boys and girls, China (BTW This is just one more reason to avoid farmed salmon).

You can see the story here: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=f1d9c138-b2b3-4c9a-b538-2ecfd378873f&k=77187

lberia: I suspect that Mr. Ed is talking about the GREED of the unions and their bosses, who basically priced North American workers out of the market. Who can afford to buy products made by companies who have to pay their unionized workers inflated salaries and beneftis?

Unions have orchestrated their own demise.

Right, lberia, the big bad corporations are greedy for trying to make a profit in a capitalist society, but unions are good when they extort others for more pay to do less work. And this continues to the point where (as it is now) you can ship raw materials from Canada to a third world, have it processed/manufactured, packaged and shipped back to Canada for less than what it would take make it here. Right.

I knew a union guy who told me to be thankful for my level of compensation in my non-union job because of their fight for "fair" compensation...of course, I could also thank him for the increased cost of the products I purchase to pay for their increases.

They don't realize that the more you pay for menial labour and low-end jobs, the more the cost of living increases for everyone and the more that the price of goods increase to compensate for (otherwise) lost profits. Therefore, the rest of society pays more so these greedy, blood-sucking parasites (unions) can get paid more for less...doing a job that could be done by practically any idiot (or a robot).

Unions have destroyed this country, lberia. There was a time when they were needed to protect the worker...but now they are exploiting both the worker and the employer. So, bye-bye union jobs and hello Chinese imports.

4 years ago, I worked with a Chinese aeronautical engineer. I once asked him what the hell he was doing in Canada,which has no aeronautical(in the true sense)facilities. His answer was simple.In Canada,we at least have some regulations regarding what we put into our products,including food. Ban all Chinese imports now.

lberia - your simplistic reductionism of the world into good and bad belongs in nursery tales.

Communism is good; capitalism is bad. Corporations are bad; workers are good.

Did you know, lberia, that a Union is a corporation? Hmmm?
That's right - it exists to make a profit. How does it make its money? Off the work, the wages, of the workers. That's right; it reduces their take home pay because they HAVE to pay union dues. The union is a parasite on the workers. It produces nothing. Nothing.

What does it do with that money? It hires Bosses. Corporate Bosses, aka Union Bosses. They take big salaries, lberia. And they require lots of expenses and benefits for themselves. Those worker wages go for their offices, their cars, their chauffeurs, their computers, their meals, their benefits.

What does the Union do as a Corporation, a greedy corporation? Well, it wants MORE money. How does the Union Corporation get more money? By threatening strikes, by holding the WORKERS hostage to its demands. The workers have to strike if the union bosses insist - and the union bosses spend a great deal of time on brainwashing the Workers.

So- the union gets more money for Its Workers. Great. And the union dues go up. The Worker gets less.
And, with more money required to produce the goods, the COST OF THOSE GOODS increases.
So, overall, there is no benefit to the Worker; indeed, he ends up with less. His union dues increase, the cost of goods increases - he's worse off.

But the Union Corporation - ahh, the bosses get their income increased. They don't pay union dues. And the bosses increase their non-taxable benefits with that extra money.

Wake up lberia. Life isn't a nursery tale. Unions are parasitic corporations. And they are extremely, extremely greedy; those union bosses like the nice life they get from the wages of the workers.

WHY IS THERE NO REQUIERMENT TO PUT COUNTRY OF ORIGIN ON ANY FOOD PRODUCT?

WHY DOES CANADA CONTINUE TO ALLOW NON DOMESTIC FOOD STUFS TO ENTER THE COUNTRY UNTESTED?

I agree with Kate if you can't screen the amount of Chinese food coming in here close the border to it until the exporter takes full legal liability for product safety.

I think that it's pretty well summed up above regarding most of my thoughts on unions... They have no place today in the labour force where we now have employment standards monitored by the Gov't, no longer a need to protect against child labour for the most part, the sweat shops are gone for the most part, and basically all the reasons for a unions existance are no longer in play... in fact, the actual unions wouldn't even want to get involved in those type of things today or form to protect people from sweat shops, low wages, excessive overtime being forced on underpayed employees for one simple reason...there's no money in it for them... or they'd be in China as well...but if they went there they'd be lined up and shot!

lets do a simple math exercise... 10,000 teachers with no choice but to be in the teachers union of BC if they want to teach and lets say the union dues are 100 a paycheck... How does the union spend a million dollars every 2 weeks to benifit the teachers our education system or to benifit our students?

Don't even go there liberia...you're out numbered and out gunned here.

Mr. Ed - exactly. The unions are no longer needed because government regulations have moved into their original mandate.

And most certainly, modern unions have no interest in protecting the productive worker; they have moved into ensuring their income, ie, their dues. Ensuring that the ratio of workers remains high, high - to keep that Union Corporation's income high, high.

So, the company can't downsize, can't decrease the costs of its product to compete internationally. And nations like China and India and Indonesia move into that gap.

The company can't get rid of deadbeat workers, and there are LOTS of them. The company, eg, the postal service, the civil service, the educational systems - there is no way that dead beats in these areas can be gotten rid of.

The unions have ONE agenda. Profit. They are busy increasing the income and benefits of the Union Bosses, increasing their investments (hah!) in stocks, in oil, in various industries. And where does their income come from? Out of the wages of the workers.

Result of unions? We can't compete on the international market. The cost of living in our own countries has skyrocketed so that a family must have both parents working. Unions, unions and unions - that's the cause.

As for China, their agenda is simple. Each worker and company wants to make money. To do that, they'll readily substitute cheap and corrupted material for quality material. And don't think that this isn't done elsewhere; Quebec has a long history of such tactics.
Chinese people know this, and insist on inspecting all the material. We don't. We rely on gov't inspections.
In China, and other areas, the gov't and the companies are linked - so, any inspections are useless.

In Canada, eg, Quebec and elsewhere, the inspectors might be incompetent (unions?). Remember the water catastrophe in Ontario, when a small town's water was not adequately monitored by its hired employees - who later complained that they weren't skilled enough to do that supervision?

if the government doesn't have the balls to ban food imports from China, it could at least require all foods processed or originating in China to be labeled as such... then we can roll the dice on our chances, then we have an informed choice.
Not that I knowingly buy food from China anyways... as a post above notes that 80%? of our apple juice comes from China, all the apple juice I buy comes in a blue box from B.C. I do note also that so many other juices and food products use apple juice as a sweetener in them.. and it's this unknown sourced juice that I believe was refered to...

I remember it didn't take so long for other governments to react in the mad cow crisis... could it be that China is too big to wrestle over this with?

I don't think that China is too big, in the sense of powerful, to deal with about this. I think that it's a complex situation of many levels.

We have priced ourselves out of supplying many goods because our unions have elevated the costs of these goods beyond our consumer capacity to support their use. The union corporation and its increase of costs is so endemic to the West that without the low costs of goods from China etc (foods, components in many produces, clothing, furniture)a large percentage of our citizens would not be able to afford a decent lifestyle.

So, many goods which go into products, such as pet food, such as toothpaste etc, are produced cheaply in China. And cheaply can mean that low costs are achieved not merely by low wages to workers but corrupted components in the products.

Who is at fault? I blame the unions, which have inflated our abilities to produce low to medium priced goods and forced us to import those goods.

What should be done? Both sides have to take action. I don't think it is possible to refuse to import Chinese goods - because we can't pick up the slack; we can't afford to produce goods at their prices.
We have to insist that they regulate their products.

The Chinese have to change their infrastructure. As I said, in China, the gov't and companies have been closely linked and regulations have been almost non-existent. China is moving, more and more, to private companies, but the 'inspectors' are still part of the old guard, who overlooked and ignored standards. This will have to change, and will change, if the West complains loudly and publicly, very publicly, about it.

China is very keen on its new image in the global world. It doesn't want to be seen as a dumping ground of corrupted products. Publicity is a very useful tool to get them to move out of the old socialist/communist mode and into a responsible and accountable capitalism.

Although I detest unions, I still think there is SOME use for them...if they are willing to work cooperatively with the corporation, rather than being obstructionist. The trouble is...power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The unions need to have their power reduced so they can focus on the good they could do...worker / business relations...and avoid the havoc they can wreak...extortion.

HOW to do that is the $1 trillion question. It's hard to fit the genie back in the bottle.

That there is an anti-union sentiment on a right wing blog site like SDA is not surprising. What is disappointing it the lack of knowledge and twisting of facts whenever the topic of unions comes up. Although that's meant as a general comment, I direct it especially to ET. ET, as an academic, I would expect at least a bit of objectivity and open mindedness from you. Instead, you display a level of ignorance about labour issues that is appalling.

I'm not going to waste time refuting all of the anti-union comments here. The same anti-union rhetoric that has been repeated for the past 130 years is being repeated now. So you can carry on parroting this tired rhetoric, or, since you're sitting in front of a computer, you can do some research, get some facts, and then at least have an objective and informed opinion.

Along the lines of the quite justifiable union bashing here (and I belong to one, much to my chagrin), I once edited a vanity autobiographical book by a guy who was an employee of a Teacher's Union.

He admitted, close to the beginning of his bio, that he was proof of the old adage that "they who cannot do, become teachers, and they who cannot teach work for the union."

At least he was honest, if not the brightest of bulbs.

Um, one thing, lberia about this comment of yours: "ET, as an academic, I would expect at least a bit of objectivity and open mindedness from you. Instead, you display a level of ignorance about labour issues that is appalling."

What are you talking about? As ET, herself, would ask "Proof?"

In your next breath you say "I'm not going to waste time refuting all of the anti-union comments here."

So, you've just blown any credibility your objections to comments here might have had. You refuse to be engaged in debate and are content to name call and stonewall, while others make clearly make their case, using facts and figures.

You're one entitled, leftie, magical thinker, lberia: "If I say it's that way, then that's the way it is. Just because ... well ... because ... you're ... ignorant."

We're all bowing to your superior debating powers.

Repeat over and over, NO MORE FOODSTUFFS FROM THE PEOPLE'S,(YA RIGHT), OF CHINA.

'batb:

"You refuse to be engaged in debate and are content to name call and stonewall, while others make clearly make their case, using facts and figures."

Which facts and figures would those be? No one has presented any facts and figures, only ill informed opinion and tired rhetoric.

Enjoy your long weekend.

Oops, that should read "NO MORE FOODSTUFFS FROM THE PEOPLE'S ,(YA RIGHT),REPUBLIC OF CHINA.

lberia - refute the following analysis.
Oh, and refute what Mr. Ed said about the teacher's unions and the millions that the Union Corporation gets in, in union dues. What does it do with that largesse? Hmmm?

Now, my analysis. Refute it.

Conclusion:The unions are parasitic on the workers.
Reasons? The unions get their income from the wages of the workers. The unions, themselves, do no work. That makes them parasites.
All the legislation to protect the workers has moved, long ago, into the domain of the government and is no longer in the domain of the unions. The unions do nothing.

Conclusion:The unions are essentially corporations. Their agenda is to get MONEY and POWER.
Reasons? The union's only income is from the wages of the workers. These wages provide the salaries, benefits, expense accounts, offices, pensions, etc of the Union Bosses. These wages are also invested in Big Business. More money for the Union Corporation, and the Union Bosses. The investment is not returned to the workers. This is not an action of a legitimate organization but of a parasitic corporation.

The Union bosses dictate to the workers and the gov't (aka Buzz Hargrove). The unions use a great deal of pressure on their members to enter into strikes (many times, no secret ballot, lots of peer pressure and threats to members to 'toe the party line'). This is not a democracy but an authoritarian corporation.

Results? More money for the workers? Yeah, sure. More money for the union bosses. Remember, the investments aren't returned to the workers. And, as usual, Union fees go up. Result: The cost of making the goods goes up - and whoosh, the jobs all go to China and India. Thanks, Union Corporation, for sending all the jobs out of the country.

Results with higher wages? The cost of goods increases. Thanks, Union Corporation, for increasing the cost of goods.

What will lberia do? He'll be reduced to ad hominem, to name-calling, to insisting that everyone is so ignorant that he, the Wise One, won't bother to refute the 'idle chatter' of the right-wingers on this blog.
Hmm. The reality is - that lberia can't refute these conclusions and reasons about unions. They are Big Corporations. And rather than producing any valid goods and services, as do most Corporations, Unions are parasites. Pure parasites on the Workers. Get rid of them.

ET:

You seem intent on keeping me busy on a Sunday. Fine.

“The unions are parasitic on the workers.
Reasons? The unions get their income from the wages of the workers. The unions, themselves, do no work. That makes them parasites.”

Unions look after collective bargaining and deal with grievances and arbitration. The net result is that unionized workers make, on average, more than non-unionized workers.

http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/labr69a.htm

You’ll notice that the difference is about $5/hr. Unionized workers pay dues which are about 2 times their hourly rate per month. So, if we use the example in the table:
$23.34 x 2 x12 months = $560.16 dues annually.
The average income of non-unionized workers is $18.81/ hour.
Compare the yearly earnings for a 40hour work week:
$23.34 x 40 x 52 = $48 547.20 vs. $18.81 x 40 x52 = $39 124.80.
The annual difference in earnings is $9 422.40. Not a bad return for a $560 investment.

“All the legislation to protect the workers has moved, long ago, into the domain of the government and is no longer in the domain of the unions. The unions do nothing.”

So what you’re saying is now we live in a perfect world, eh? Business interests constantly lobby governments to relax legislation. In BC, the Campbell gov’t gutted safety regulations after taking power. The result has been needless worker deaths in the quest for greater profitability. The recent incident with the van carrying farm workers is just one example. Is lobbying for better safety regulations a bad thing in your mind?
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/03/08/FarmWorkers/

“The unions are essentially corporations.”

So what? Unions are not in business to turn a profit but they are Mutual Benefit Corporations, formed solely for the benefit of its members.

“The union's only income is from the wages of the workers. These wages provide the salaries, benefits, expense accounts, offices, pensions, etc of the Union Bosses.”

Again, so what? My union has 5000 members in BC and there are 7 full time people looking after them. Their wages are comparable to what the highest paid union members get. These people are elected to their positions, so everyone has the opportunity to go for these jobs.

“The investment is not returned to the workers. This is not an action of a legitimate organization but of a parasitic corporation.”

I’ve already proven you wrong on this point.

“The Union bosses dictate to the workers and the gov't (aka Buzz Hargrove). The unions use a great deal of pressure on their members to enter into strikes (many times, no secret ballot, lots of peer pressure and threats to members to 'toe the party line'). This is not a democracy but an authoritarian corporation.”

Dictate? You have been watching too many movies. Strike votes, and indeed all aspects of union business are tightly regulated by governments.
http://www.lrb.bc.ca/regulations/

“Results with higher wages? The cost of goods increases. Thanks, Union Corporation, for increasing the cost of goods.”

Even rabid anti-unionist understood the benefits of paying his workers a good wage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Ford.27s_labor_philosophy

So ET, I’ve refuted your so-called conclusions. I’ve even provided you with links wherever possible to back up my explanations. You, on the other hand, have made all sorts of allegations without backing any of them up with evidence.

Have a nice long weekend.

lberia - rubbish. Take a look, for instance, at triple w jobquality.ca

Their stats are that the overall wage difference is only 1.75 per hour. That goes in those union dues.
See also a paper by Kumar and Stengos on the bias in measuring the difference between union and non-union wages by using the AVERAGE rather than the actual wage. It is always an error to use the statistical average, as that skews the results.

I repeat - the unions do nothing. Lobbying for better safety regulations shouldn't cost the workers millions in dues per year. That's an exorbitant cost!!

Unions are parasitic corporations; they are in the business of making money. They certainly don't return the millions in dues to the workers. They invest those dues - and the worker doesn't get a penny back. On a cost benefit analysis, the 'work' they do for the workers is grossly overpriced. Why, any group of workers could hire a consultant or negotiator or accountant lawyer for a fraction of the price they pay in dues.

No, you haven't proven that my claim that unions are parasites is wrong. Again - the cost of the unions is in the millions. That money comes from the worker's wages - and they don't get millions in benefits from that money.

Heh - strike votes aren't the point. The point is the pressure put on members to vote 'a certain way', the union buddies exhorting members that they MUST vote a 'certain way'; the rejection of secret ballots - and so on. Unions are big business, and they run their shop with one agenda - power.

Again, the cost of the goods increases - and the cause of those increases - are the unions. How does that help the worker? You haven't answered that.

AND - to lower the costs, many corporations have moved their production facilities to China, India, etc. Thanks, unions - for doing this to the workers here. Lots of jobs lost because of the Union Corporation.

So- the unions then shriek to the government, ie, the taxpayer, to subsidize the companies here, to 'keep the jobs in Canada'.

Think about the results of unions - and none of them are beneficial results.
First -is the increase to the cost of goods here, to the extent that the Worker can't afford them - and they require BOTH PARENTS working.

Second, the companies can't afford to produce the goods - so, they move to China.

Third, the Unions then insist that the WORKERS, ie, the taxpayers, give MORE of their money, in the form of subsidies to that company...just so they can keep working! The workers are paying the union, lowering the net pay - and increasing the costs of goods, and losing their jobs, and paying taxes to keep those jobs!!!! All of that - is due to the unions!

Paying Union dues. Paying more for goods. And paying higher taxes to be used as subsidies to keep their jobs here.
What has caused this mess? Unions.

Then - you tell me that unions are beneficial because they set up 'safety standards'! Heh. People can't afford to purchase goods, so we have to import food and goods from China - with all the contaminants they have. That's due to unions.

People can't afford to purchase Made in Canada goods - they are too expensive. So, we have to purchase lesser quality goods. That's due to unions.

Don't bring in ancient history (Ford). The problem is NOW. Unions are no longer necessary.

They have transformed into parasitic corporations and - as I said - they increase the cost of goods, they don't actually give the worker a NET increase in wages - because any increase goes in higher union dues, in higher consumer costs. AND, in higher taxes, to be used as subsidies to 'keep the jobs'.

Get rid of the unions, and wages will be competitive. The companies will pay competitive wages, to keep their employees. If the wages are too low - the employees will go elsewhere. We don't need parasitic union corporations.

Cheers - and you haven't provided any evidence of the benefits of unions.

ET:

Thanks for the link. Ironically, it also proves you wrong. Jobquality gives an average wage differential of $3/hr in favour of unionized jobs.

3w.jobquality.ca/indicator_e/uni004.stm

That's $6240/yr more for a full time job. Even the figure you give of $1.75/hr more means a unionized worker would make $3640/yr more. All for a contribution of $500 to $1000 per year for dues (which BTW, is tax deductible). How is this parasitic? How are these not beneficial results?

Look at the health, welfare and pension benefits advantage unionized workers have:

3w.jobquality.ca/indicator_e/uni004_2.stm

Look at the greater job satisfaction:

3w.jobquality.ca/indicator_e/uni004_3.stm

"Get rid of the unions, and wages will be competitive. The companies will pay competitive wages, to keep their employees."

That's utopian thinking, and history has proven it wrong.

ET, as for the other things you listed, you only provided your opinions, not anything factual, so I'm not going to bother arguing about them.

However,just for you, a little personal story about how things work in organized labour:
Two weeks ago, union members at my work place voted to reject an offer from the employer, This offer was recommended by the Labour executive as being the best possible deal we would get, yet 90% voted against it. That's what the members wanted. It's called democracy. There was no coersion and the vote was done by secret ballot. The result is that after four weeks of negotiations, bargaining will now be turned over to an arbitrator for binding arbitration. The cost estimate for this is $70 000 to $100 000. So that's where a lot of the money goes...to pay the lawyers.

Why are union members never told that any raise they receive will be subject to 22% Fed tax, plus Prov tax. And, fyi, a lot of those benefits are now taxable to the employee.

Lib said
"...So what you’re saying is now we live in a perfect world, eh? Business interests constantly lobby governments to relax legislation. In BC, the Campbell gov’t gutted safety regulations after taking power. The result has been needless worker deaths in the quest for greater profitability. The recent incident with the van carrying farm workers is just one example. Is lobbying for better safety regulations a bad thing in your mind?
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/03/08/FarmWorkers/"

What boat or turnup truck did you just fall off of???

The workers involved were adults were they not?
Are they legal Canadian citizens??? Do they understand the laws in Canada??? Do they know that seatbelts are legally required for every occupant in a motorvehicle in Canada and have been since the 80's??? Are they being paid above or under the table while collecting a monthly welfare check that tax payers foot the bill for???

I'm not a heartless bastard but my view on this whole accident affair is they got what was ultimately coming for not reporting the situation and continuing to spung off the system... I feel for them but why is it that it's the gov't fault liberia??? Aren't the Indo Canadian owners of the farm, vans, in even the Indo Canadian workers all in part responsible for their own actions? ... and why is it that "Indo Canadians" seem to be the only group to place their Indo origins ahead of being Canadian??? you never hear reports of Japanese Canadians, South African Canadians, Chinese Canadians, German Canadians...they're just Canadians...

"Unionized workers pay dues which are about 2 times their hourly rate per month. "

Where the hell do you get that dues number from??? When I was in a Union 15+ years ago in Ottawa the dues on my $60k annual was over $100 per paycheck (over 3x my hourly) so I and everyone else in the ~4500 person division I worked for paid roughly $100 x 26 or $2600 annually... or $11.7 million to a group that esentially collected the money and made it impossible to cut out the dead wood... Cutting those people could have made the actual workers more money and saved the particular company I worked for at the time... as the company could have been much more effective, competative and profitable without the otherwise "unemployables" that got in without any skill except they were bi-lingual when the big push was on to hire bi-lingual workers within businesses like BNR, Corel, Nortel, Digital, etc, in in Ottawa...once in it's virtually impossible to get rid of them.

""Get rid of the unions, and wages will be competitive. The companies will pay competitive wages, to keep their employees."

That's utopian thinking, and history has proven it wrong."

I actually agree with Lib on this point... I think a clearer way of stating this is "Companies will pay more for staff who are more employable to maintain those people who are useful or valued employes."

"Where the hell do you get that dues number from???"

That's what I pay. I've seen it lower and higher.

"...so I and everyone else in the ~4500 person division I worked for paid roughly $100 x 26 or $2600 annually..."

Yeah, but it's tax deductible, and if figure in the $3-$5/hr avg more that unionized workers get, you're still much farther ahead.

You miss the point...the company I worked for is out of business now and a lot of people lost there jobs because a non-union option was available to customers which was leaner and meaner competition for the same customers...I left long before it happened for greener pastures... but while where I worked had to tow the union line, the comp. were able to do more work with fewer staff who they could afford to pay more money because if you were non-productive and or "dead wood" you were let go... I believe the managers would even go so far to write glowing letters of reference to any person they would lay off if they promised to go apply with any competator that was unionized...knowing the more dead weight the unionised comp. had the better it was for them.

As for bring tax deductable, on $2,600, even if the entire amount came off my urnings, the difference in my return would have been negligable... 60k * 35% tax bracket = 21k in taxes vs $20,090... Roughly $0.35 on the dollar

So I could get max $910 from taxes but it doesn't do a heck of alot for someone whose company folds because they're burdened with unproductive staff they can't simply fire... if they're wrongfully dismissed there are laws in place to get them compensation.

So lets say 4% of the staff were dead wood but management knew it was virtually impossible to get rid of them... a very small number when looking at companies like Canada Post, Air Canada, BC Ferries, or say the any of various Teachers Unions across Canada...

1000 staff making an average of say for simple numbers 50k annually paying 1500 in union dues would cost $50 million annually in salary...now cut out the union and the 4% deadwood staff that suck up the free coffee, O2, and take up space around the water cooler... That company spending $50 million annually in salary's now spreads the cash over 960 staff and can pay them $50k annually and be $2 million more profitable or do something really crazy and give all their staff a Christmas bonus of say $1,000 and still be a million bucks ahead...not to mention that the staff don't need to spend $1500 annually to a Union and they come out $1500 ahead of the game in their annual gross pay... Those type of work places do exist.

I noticed the limited responce though regarding immigrant labour... guess it's okay for the left to always blame the Gov't on that,... but where are the unions in those industry??? Guess there's no way to make any money from someone collecting an under the table paycheck and pogy... maybe unions with leaders like Buzz lightyear should go work something out with the fedral liberals...they seem to have great accountants for creative ways of stealing our money and getting away with it in broad daylight...