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So our government is willing to spend $10B bailing out an american car company which is mis-managed and will likely need more bailouts in the next economic crisis, but when it comes to fulfilling a major worldwide demand for radioactive isotopes, we're not going to stay in that business anymore? Not only are we pioneers in this technology, but we were going to be world leaders, but not anymore.

Instead of going ahead with the Maple reactors and fixing past errors and investing in future technologies and innovating (while spending a lot less than the bailouts), we're putting money into a car company that can't innovate. Why are we going backwards? The Chalk River reactor has been a source of major research and innovation, but we're shutting that down without a replacement. Let's instead invest in short-term vote-winning measures.. great..

Just wanted to rant about this as it's been bothering me for a few days... feel free to comment

Or Russia on Eurasia continent.
Government of Canada has no interest for funding of electric cars manufacturing.
Absolutely no reason, because gas taxes is one of the major sources of tax income.
Here is one well known story about it.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/10/ ... -zenn.html

This is not research company. It is Canadian Electrical car manufacturer. Of real cars.
http://www.zenncars.com/

Yet, as for as I know, it is impossible to buy this fully electrical car in Ontario.

Instead we would have to pay our tax dollars for re-invention of Volt from GM. Which is not even exists yet. And which is developed in Detroit.

Chalk River has never turned a profit, and never will – that’s not its mandate. It’s mandate it to produce isotopes, and do research – mostly to further Candu reactor designs. It costs billions to run, and you don’t get that many jobs out of it (compared to GM).

Both are a waste of tax dollars. I’m sure there are plenty of companies that would be willing to produce isotopes on a free market. If we won’t let that happen, then we might as well buy isotopes from other governments and let their tax payers pay the subsidies.

Canada has always been a resource country! With the exception of Ontario, we’re a country of miners, loggers, and fishers, and we always have been. Canada is not an industrialized country by world standards. The only reason we were even allowed into the G6 (originally) was because we kicked and screamed.

Enjoy it – resource based economies are expected to do very well over the next 10-20 years as China modernizes. We’ll all be richer for it.

And they shouldn’t help us in Ontario. If a particular resource is in demand, companies will flock to it looking for profit, and in turn create jobs. By allowing Alberta to keep the profits from its resources, it can lower taxes, or increase program spending. This makes Alberta a better place to live, and further encourages people to relocate there. They have high paying jobs as one incentive, and good government benefits as another.

When you spread the wealth around, it encourages people to stay in unproductive regions. One only needs to look at the Maritimes to see proof of that. People fish in the summer and go on EI all winter, and Alberta (and previously Ontario) foot the bill.





You don’t ‘build’ an industrial/ technological economy. Russia tried to build one and it failed. Industrial/ technological economies create themselves. You can help them by creating an environment where they can grow with low taxes, low regulation, low corruption, and an educated work force all help, but there are other factors necessary that are difficult to control. Ease of transportation, local access to water for industrial use, and a dense population are key factors for industrial purposes. Ontario just happens to have the right mix for all of this (The St.Laurent river is what originally made us a destination for settlers because it was easy to move goods across).

I wouldn’t say we have better or worse policies then the Americans. They are just bigger, so it’s natural that it seems like all the innovation happens there. They may have Google, Microsoft, and Apple, but we have RIM, and (had) Nortel. It’s natural that for every 1 big Canadian company, there will be 10 American. Americans do get a slight edge because their massive size and temperate climate helps them attract educated people from around the world better then we can.

So size at nice temperature is the matters.
I wasn't aware of this from immigrants stories I know personally.
Last time "I checked", size and temperature was attractive for flies, not for educated people. LOL.

I was speaking economically and population wise. America’s GDP is 13.8 Trillion dollars, Canada’s 1.2 Trillion dollars.



If you’re a brain surgeion (or whatever) looking for a better life, and can go anywhere you want because you’re the definition of awesome. Are you going to immigrate to Canada, or the US? Canada – Freezing 8 of 12 months, California – Ceramic tiled sidewalks.

But Looking to Chalk River and Maple as purely profit making projects is the flaw in this government's thinking as well. The US government spends Billions on space exploration in NASA. Is there any profitability there? Nope. But do they come out with innovation and create a stronger research community for themselves? Heck yeah. This is a question of investing in R&D vs investing in manufacturing. Measuring investment in number of jobs created and short-term benefits is precisely what will keep us back from competing at the world level in R&D. We're innovators now in one thing. It'll be a sad day if we lose it because of some short-term thinking on this government's part.

Vancouver is at the top cities to live. I didn't find even 6 month of freezing temp in Toronto as well. How about Niagara wineries and fruit farms?


I have been in CA many times. LA, SF, Palo-Alto, Aptos. It is not what easy.
Same level with me engineers, with higher salary are driving up to three hours to get to Sunnyvale office.
They are not able to afford house nearby.
Some business people are taking off from CA. Too high taxes and some other issues. They are moving to places like Texas.

But.

I knew two "brain doctors". Immigrated to Canada. As Doctors. Rejected to work here. Went to University. For Canadian Diploma. Rejected. Went to USA. Six digits salary for both. As for doctors.
I meet at work in Montreal one person from France. Immigrant. She was looking for job for one year.
She told me locals don't like people from France.
USA is one big melting pot. Canada is not. But I'm not blaming only Canadians.
USA does not attracts people by convenience of the size and average temperature.
Educated people are attracted by prosperity in USA.
If they are willing to melt. Under Sun of 100+F temperature in Alto.

The difference is that NASA partakes in unprofitable ventures. There is no business model that could support it. The nuclear industry could be profitable. It's better left in private hands.

I have to admit that it's bad enough thinking of some governments having access to nuclear materials, but corporations are even worse. They would have to be HEAVILY regulated and monitored to ensure they were maintaining safety properly, dealing with waste properly, and not selling nuclear materials to people who shouldn't have it to make a buck... it's one thing for arms dealers to work as a middle man so that terrorists get ahold of american firearms, but could you imagine a free market for nuclear weapons?

And yet, I agree with you that the government doesn't seem able to run things properly and that some smart cookies from the private sector wouldn't be running out of isotopes by now (well, unless shut down by the government for safety reasons, which is basically what happened here anyway).

Agreed. I think the free market needs to be in charge, but the government needs to monitor the nuclear process to protect its citizens.

I guarantee you that if a private company was running Chalk River, the shutdown wouldn’t have caused any problems – they would have had a backup plan to protect their investments.

…However, a free market in nuclear weapons would certainly make those back yard firework’s more interesting on Canada Day. Ever see The Cone Heads when he set off that little bottle rocket at the football game? How cool would that be?!

There’s appropriate places for the government for sure. It’s interesting to note that while the government runs the military, private companies make the weapons. The government simply regulates who can/cannot purchase those weapons, and the system works exceptionally well. I don’t see why the Nuclear industry should be any different. Privately run, and government regulated.

Mortgage Securities and CDO’s are examples of companies going haywire in unregulated markets. However this is a far more complex story then it would seem. Those companies would never have gone haywire if the Fed hadn’t flooded the market with cheap credit. Or if the US government didn’t abuse its ownership of Freddy/Fannie and use them as social engineering tools to give mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them.

In a properly functioning economy, greed is kept in check by fear. You want to invest in that speculative bubble because it offers high returns, but you face the risk of losing all your money, so you don’t. The fundamental cause of the credit crisis is that fear was removed from the equation by the government essentially guaranteeing the mortgages which everything rested on. Then it fueled greed by giving everyone access to cheap money.

Regulation might help prevent a repeat of this crisis, but the fundamental problem isn’t solved. And unless it is, we’ll continue to have crisis’s like this in the future – they will just manifest themselves differently.

There's no perfect line to be drawn between what should be government owned and what shouldn't be. the 407 is a great example of something that should have remained public, because the toll would not have gone up, would perhaps have been taken off, hence drastically reducing traffic congestion. Instead the corporation is always increasing fees and being more and more profitable. Yes it takes half the time to expand and repair the highway, but at what cost?
Then again, if Mike Harris' government wasn't so obsessed about winning an election through selling it off to balance the books, we wouldn't be in this mess. Elections and minority governments are a big mess for publicly owned operations because they'll do what's popular, not what's best for the long term.