Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Harper and Flaherty to Sell off the Furniture

The attack on Canada continues. The Royal Canadian Mint and Via Rail just might be next.

Why do these two men hate Canada so much?


Photobucket

8 comments:

Big Winnie said...

He's selling Canada, "one piece at a time".

Who's the real Canadian? Certainly not Harper!

penlan said...

Another diversion to keep us from talking about the economic woes, the deficit, etc.

RuralSandi said...

Well, after the assets are gone - sell Canada to the US?

Harper is "un-Canadian".

Geekwad said...

Why would one even think of selling the mint? It is respected around the world and I'm pretty sure it runs in the black by printing other country's currency.

Things I would not mind selling (if buyer will promptly remove it from our premises) include the RCMP and the PMO.

Robert G. Harvie, Q.C. said...

Do we really feel, as Canadians, that we are defined by something as irrelevan to most Canadians as CBC television and Via Rail.

I don't know a single person who has used Via Rail during my lifetime. I'm 47 years old.

In half a century, no one I've talked to about Via Rail with has ever indicated they have accessed it.

Now - to be fair, Via Rail doesn't travel through Calgary (now why would they, I mean, only the most vibrant growing City in the Dominion).

So - supposing I drive my carbon-spewing automobile to Edmonton, and decide to take the Via trip to Vancouver..

First problem - there is no published schedule for travel from Edmonton. You enter your departure date and it tells you there is no scheduled train.. and so, you have to hunt and peck.

Ok.. so I can travel from Edmonton on June 6, 2009.. but, gosh darn it, I can't return to Edmonton until July 24. Oh well, guess I'll take a month and a half of holidays.

Uh.. yeah. Hate to see that privatized, I'm sure that the service would be so much worse than it's currently being run.

Seriously.

But.. ok, if I can't take a trip to Vancouver via Edmonton, maybe I'll sit at home and watch a little CBC. Hmm.. let's see what's on tonight. Well, getting home at 5:00pm, I can watch a re-run of the Simpsons. Followed by Wheel of Fortune. (Where are the CanCon police?) Next - an hour of the worst news program money (and lots of money) can buy.

Then - a special on the problem with toy guns (did anyone suggest CBC has a liberal bias.. pssshaw)

This hour has 22 minutes. Ok. Occasionally funny - I'll give them that.

And then, as if we didn't get enough PC pap between 6 and 7:30, we have "Little Mosque on the Prairie", showing how truly Liberal we are where a family of Muslim-Canadians can co-exist with those ignorant rednecks from Saskatchewan. (Shock, the show is actually filmed entirely in Ontario, just outside of Toronto).

Again.. if you haven't gathered that CBC speaks primarily to Liberal Canadians, this series will confirm your suspicion.

..if you haven't guessed, I'm not losing any sleep over the sale of Via Rail and CBC, though I highly doubt the CBC has any marketable value.

Ignoring the theme of the topic, but how do we pay for our programs and all of our bailouts.. I suppose we could raise taxes, that should help industry.

Or, we could cut program spending. I'm open to input on that score. Gun Control program maybe?

Geekwad said...

Roblaw, I use Via to commute to work several times a month. Now you can no longer say you've never talked to someone who's accessed (access is a noun, dammit) it.

Both Via and the CBC exist (ostensibly) because there are important public services that do not make sense for private interests to provide, usually because they are not profitable. Via provides transportation and shipping to many communities at a loss. CBC (in its prime) provided Canadian culture free from the biases and selection effects of commercial media.

We could have decided to reach these ends (which you may or not agree are important, but that's a separate argument) by manipulating private endeavor. "If you want to run your trains between Montreal and Toronto, you must also serve Kitchener and Niagra." "You must dedicate so many hours a week to community programming for each channel you wish to broadcast." Etc. But we decided we would be better served by attempting to meet these needs directly, with crown corporations.

We can sell of the corporations, but that's only half a solution. We still need to provide the services we used to have crown corporations for. You may not be very impressed with Via, but no private corporation could or would do what Via does, because what Via does does not make money.

Some people have a big ideological problem with that. They think government and government services should be run as a corporation; if it isn't making money, it should be axed. I cannot understand this thinking, but I can see that it is exactly why the present day CBC Television sucks so much. I am sure you know, roblaw, that for a couple of decades now, the CBC has been "encouraged" to create a more commercial product, to compete with commercial media. This is so ass-backwards, neither side of the issue can possibly be satisfied with the result. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom.

I do feel that Via and CBC very much conform to my idea of Canada. Do they define it? That question is formed around the answer you want to hear. No they don't define it. But they are consistent with it, and in my opinion, improve it.

Gene Rayburn said...

Geekwad, it's only important if Roblaw says its so. He's from outside of Calgary so what he says goes. Dont you get it?

Platty said...

Maybe you should actually read what the article says.

However, the source said it's hard to imagine CBC or Via Rail being part of a privatization.

Did you catch that part??


Well, after the assets are gone - sell Canada to the US?

Harper is "un-Canadian".


Wow, that Liberal logic is working overtime here.

Harper Un-Canadian??

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it wasn't Harper who spoke to Americans saying "This is your America, just as much as it is mine"

Too funny....

==