Someone back home just forwarded me this email that was recently sent out by Chilliwack’s member of Parliament, Chuck Strahl. In it, he talks about his views with regards to what is happening in Ottawa right now. I’m posting this for informational purposes, not because I agree with everything he’s saying in it. Last week I sent around an update on Canada’s economic situation, with the observation that it wasn’t a very enjoyable subject to write about. Unfortunately, this week it appears that our economic woes are morphing into a political crisis of sorts, at a time when we can least ...

I just read this article which talks about how the executives at Ford are willing to cut their salaries to $1 if they receive money from the federal government. Wow, that’s nice of them. Notably absent in that entire article is a mention of executive bonuses. Bonuses and dividends are typically taxed as investments instead of income, and usually result in a smaller tax burden. In Canada, the tax rate on dividends is roughly half of what it is in regular income, so that’s the preferred method of making money. So if they reduce their salaries to $1, I gotta ask, what are they planning to do ...

I was reading a quote by Donald Rumsfeld this morning: Private media does not get up in the morning and say what can we do to promote the values and ideas that the free Western nations believe in? It gets up in the morning and says they’re going to try to make money by selling whatever they sell… The way they decided to do that is to be dramatic and if it bleeds it leads is the common statement in the media today. They’ve got their job, and they have to do that, and that’s what they do. We need someone in the United States government, some entity, not like the old USIA . . . I think this ...