Thomas Mulcair's Canada?

This is just one sample of the many regulations Socialists tinker with. They just hate anyone who aspires to better themselves. They are the New Ruling Class. Welcome to "1984".

My understanding the cutoff figure is 19 in Canada maybe just Ontario. Cheers;

Way to skirt a stupid rule, Frenchmen!

I'm gobbed smacked, no wonder they want to retire at 55.

Maybe California could even learn something from this as city after city is going bankrupt due to the nanny state mentality. Nahhh, after all, this is California.

That's incredible - the interference of government in the operation of private businesses.

One stunning comment by a French bureaucrat: "Cars are more complicated than they were years ago, so why shouldn't the labour code also be more complicated'?

But, but, the term 'complicated' has different meanings in this two comparisons. The technological mechanism of cars is functional; it enables cars to 'do more things'. The increase in rules and regulations of the labour code restricts companies and workers from 'doing more things'.

Unbelievably stupid. But indicative of the "me first" union mentality.

ET...

That is the quote I could not believe either.

How completely stupid is that remark? Is that the mentality of them over there? If so, they are done.

Watch the EU implode.

I saw today where a huge part of Germany voted socialist this week in their elections.

Please, North America, do not provide them with a ripcord...

Socialists love "small business" because you know "big business" is just wickedly evil since it involves "success". Failure is something to be rewarded. Hell if you're a drunken' pot smoking drug dealing teen you could easily be president one day.

"'If the code is complicated, it’s because our society is complicated,' says Bernard Vivier, director of the Higher Institute of Labor in Paris, which studies labor relations for unions and companies. 'Cars are much more complicated today than they were 40 years ago. Why shouldn’t the labor code be?'"

Unbelievable.

Same thing happened in Ontario back in the eraly 90s when economic genius Bob Rae introduced his Employment Equity Act.

The 'goals and objectives' of this race-based hiring legislation didn't apply to smaller companies with under x number of employees.

Many companies, that were having difficulty finding any skilled employees at all, knew that being forced to hire on the basis of race would really doom them. Hence, the same solution: create companies within your company.

And then there are intelligent economic analyses, like Jim Stanford's:

http://t.co/4S11KnIr

"Methinks the bitumen boosters doth protest too much, with their loud attempt to suppress any debate over the potential downsides of Canada’s current energy strategy — which consists of scraping as much bitumen, as quickly as possible, and exporting it raw.

Are there important national spinoff benefits generated by the petroleum boom in Alberta? Absolutely. But are there also important costs and risks associated with this economic strategy based on the unregulated extraction and export of a non-renewable resource? Certainly. Could we do a better job of managing those costs and risks? Undoubtedly … unless we continue pretending they don’t exist.

Sensible policy analysis considers both the costs and the benefits of any policy choice. Where bitumen is concerned, however, even acknowledging that a coin has two sides is now denounced as unpatriotic and divisive. It’s time to end this energy McCarthyism, and have a genuine discussion about our future national energy strategy. Our goal should be to maximize the benefits, and minimize the costs, of this precious endowment of a non-renewable resource — and it’s not at all clear that the current Klondike-style approach is the best way to do that."
Jim Stanford

Billy boy;
To suggest that the oilsands business is unregulated speaks to a serious lack of knowledge about the industry or willful mistruths. I find it less than amusing that now that the industry is producing significant revenue that many people want on the 'gravy' train no matter what it takes. Easterners who had absolutely nothing to do with the funding and the losses incurred for decades and the eco 'specialists' who angle for jobs on review committees where they are paid by industry or government at $300/day!

As the world spirals down into a multi-decade depression I suspect pipelines to the west coast will be eagerly embrassed by those very people. They live from the public tit and know no other way to put food on the table.

A friend of mine works for Total Petroleum. He has occassion to interact with management sent out from Paris. The latest encounter was a gem as this suit referred to Canada as backward and unsophisticated. What part of Canada have we heard that before? Yes, he questioned the the Canadian ability to manage money. While I question that ability as well when I look at France we look like misers!

Did I read somewhere long ago (or is one of my man daymares) that the French have a hours-per-week-worked limitation and that they have inspectors roaming around checking for evidence of office building lights on after mandatory closing time?

Part and parcel of the economy-as-fixed-pie size fallacy and the need to fairly share the limited number of hours of work that are possible in this fixed-pie-size economy.