Yet Another Country Which Is Not The USA Cuts Corporate Taxes

From Canadian Financial Post:

The Conservative government delivered a mini-budget yesterday that lowered the Goods and Services Tax for a second time and reduced corporate taxes by one-third over the next five years as part of a $60-billion multi-year package of tax cuts.

The plan was contained in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's fall update, which was a budget in all but name given the myriad tax relief measures introduced. The minority government's political opponents issued fierce denunciations of the plan, but Liberal leader Stéphane Dion said his party would not oppose the measures, ensuring they receive Parliamentary approval as early as today.

When Liberal Canadians are not opposing corporate tax cuts, it makes you wonder what kind of world we live in, and why our rates are still so high.

HT Cato

#1: The French, #2: Rapidly Becoming The Canadians

The Premier of Ontario apparently needs the intervention of a clue-by-four:

"Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty said Wednesday that he does not want to see the provinces' schools resort to installing metal detectors and having uniformed security officers patrol the halls in the wake of Tuesday's fatal stabbing at a Toronto high school.

"Such a move, he said, would amount to the Americanization of schools in Ontario.

"'I see that as an absolute last resort,' Mr. McGuinty told reporters during an election campaign stop.

"Instead, he said, Ontario needs to distinguish itself from the United States by imposing an outright ban on hand guns.

"'Let's ban handguns in Ontario,' he said. 'Let's ban handguns across the country. Let's declare war against handguns.'"

I don't even know where to begin. Should I begin with the most obvious point that a ban on handguns (even if it were effective - which it wouldn't be) wouldn't stop people from stabbing each other? What about the absurd premise that the solution to the problem (assuming that there is an underlying problem other than that society includes people who are willing to kill other people using whatever means they can obtain) has to be Un-American first and effective second? Once I decide where to begin, though, what next? Should I mention how later in the article the inevitable funding issue comes up?

I think I'll just stop here before I give myself an ulcer.

HT: Fark

As If We Need Another Reason To Hate Canada

Carpe Diem has a post, inspired by this article, about the average wait times for an MRI in Canada vs the US, along with a scary story as anecdotal evidence.

. . . Lindsay McCreith, who was told in 2006 that he probably had a brain tumor. His case was an emergency and he needed an MRI fast, but the wait time for a "free" MRI was 4.5 months in Ontario, and it's illegal to purchase a private MRI in Ontario. So he was told to get to the end of the MRI line with his suspected brain tumor and wait 135 days for his free MRI.

What to do? Lindsay contacted Timely Medical in Vancouver, a three-year old private medical broker in Canada, which got him an MRI the next day across the border in Buffalo, NY. Result? As suspected, he did indeed have a brain tumor the size of a golf ball. McCreith then was able to schedule brain surgery within a week in the U.S., surgery that would have taken eight months in Canada -- if Lindsay had still been alive.

Tax Everything That Moves and Then Everything That Doesn't

Toronto is considering a new tax that essentially charges people to stand on the sidewalk:

"City Hall may have another wallet wallop coming for bar and club owners, as it ponders charging to have customers wait outside on Toronto-owned sidewalks to get into establishments.

"Those behind the idea believe it will not only generate badly needed revenue but act as a kind of de facto crowd control and reduce the potential for violence downtown. But not everyone is in favour of yet another reason not to head into the core. 'Taxing the sidewalk is just another insane thing the city can do,' explodes Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong. 'We'll tax not only anything that moves, we'll tax anything that doesn't move!'

...

"But while patrons won't pay for it, they're still sure it will wind up coming out of their pockets. "In the end the owners are going to feel the pinch and then the pinch is going to come on us," predicts Andrew Christoforou."

HT: Fark Headline

Canadian Dollar Rising

MSNBC is reporting that the Canadian dollar hit a 30-year high against the US Dollar (94.22 Canadian cents per 1 USD), up from its all time low of 61.79 to 1 in 2002:

"The CIBC report cites an expected rise in Canadian interest rates and stronger-than-expected economic growth, along with hot commodity prices and an 'avalanche' of corporate takeovers that require foreign acquirers to deal in Canadian dollars.

...

"Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve looks set to cut rates late in the year, reducing the attractiveness of the American dollar, Rubin said.

...

"Equipped with increased purchasing power, Canadians are shopping for everything from cars to furniture and electronics, both at home and across the border. Their freer spending boosted retail sales by 1.9 percent in March, a Statistics Canada report showed. Travel by Canadians in the U.S. and internationally has also risen.

"While this increase in living standards may seem attractive, not everyone is happily throwing back vacation-resort margaritas with news of Canada’s rising dollar.

"Canada’s manufacturing sector used to enjoy that the struggling currency made their goods less expensive in the U.S. and internationally. Now their return on investment is lower due to a less favorable currency conversion, and analysts predict some manufacturers could eventually be priced out of global markets."

I Can Haz Socialized Medicine?

Carpe Diem lists the Top 10 Reasons to Reject Canadian Medicine in CA

Memorial Day Links

So what did you do with your Memorial Day? I read this stuff.

An unsympathetic review of Myth of the Rational Voter, with some responses at the end. Do you think "The People" are truly wise? A bit long but worth the read.

The New York Times also has an article discussing whether voters make good decisions, and why three-fourths of them supported the invasion of Iraq at the time, but now two thirds oppose it, and why a statesman should listen to such easily swayed people in either case.

Ottawa fails to ban trans fats. And this is news now.

The New York Times devotes an entire article to a regional delicacy of Quebec, poutine, which it describes as "a gloppy, caloric layering of French fries, fresh cheese curds (a byproduct of Cheddar making) and gravy, poutine goes deep into the Quebequois psyche."

Reason has an article on price-gouging laws and whether they would lower gas prices. In case you thought they were a good idea.

An unreconstructed communist tells his audience that the Age of Empires is over, since the American Empire is imploding under the weight of its own ineptitude, and attacks by those infuriating mortar ships. They can wipe out your capital is seconds!!

This looks like a term paper some Catholic student wrote on medieval usury laws. While a little academic for popular consumption, it has some fascinating info on the Catholic moral debate around charging interest on loans and how Aquinas laid the foundation for the modern moral understanding of interest. Honestly, sometimes it seems that the motto of any student of Catholic thought should be Aquinas: You Either Agree With Him, Or Are Wrong.

Finally, Rachel Carson's Grim Legacy looks at, well, just that. I always knew environmentalists killed people, but at least it's only brown people in third world countries, so no one particularly cares.

Canadian and European Unemployment

Carpe Diem points out that, while Canada is celebrating a 30-year low unemployment rate of %6.1 places it behind 47 of the 50 states in the Union. Also, if European countries like Belgium (8.2%), France (8.6%), Germany (8%), Spain (8.4%) were added as U.S. states they would each rank #51 with the highest unemployment rates in the U.S., behind Mississippi (7.5%).