Daily Salt Shaker Back From Ontario

I'll be back up posting today.

Ontario is the New Quebec

Canada prepared to offer auto giants $6-billion in financing

The governments of Canada and Ontario are in advanced negotiations to provide unprecedented bankruptcy financing for the Canadian operations of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

According to people familiar with the matter, federal and provincial officials are in the final stages of discussions with the U.S. Treasury and senior auto executives toward a contribution of as much as $6-billion (U.S.) for unique cross-border financing that would see GM and Chrysler through the initial phases of creditor protection.

This vote buying boondoggle disgusts me. We're paying a bankrupt, foreign companies billions to keep producing crappy cars in Ontario, built by financially unsupportable, unskilled labour. Talk about pissing money down the drain. Throwing good money, after bad. Pardon me, while I take a few aspirin and lie down.

Ontario is the new Quebec.

National Post Calls for the End of Equalization Payments

Three cheers for the National Post today who published an editorial calling for the end of the equalization payment scam:

That leaves Quebec, which will get $8-billion in equalization this year, almost 60% of the total. Though Quebec politicians would protest loudly at any threat to this jackpot, anyone visiting Quebec would be hard-pressed to find justification for the lavish outlay. Whether in terms of schools, universities, health care, social services, industry, culture or business, Quebec is as advanced and sophisticated a society as exists in Canada, having prospered mightily in recent years. Yet it continues to receive massive annual payments from other provinces, even as its noisy nationalists proclaim themselves a "nation," fully capable of handling their own affairs.

The situation no longer makes sense, and the longer it is allowed to drag on the more damaging and politically divisive it will become. Politically docile as they have been trained to be, Ontario residents are unlikely to quietly accept a continued annual outflow of billions of dollars to other provinces while their own services suffer and unemployment approaches double digits. Alberta, despite its image as the land of plenty, will struggle to meet its own needs until another oil boom comes along. Neither province should be expected to keep running deficits to finance programs in other provinces that long ago caught up to their own.

We need more of this kind of talk in Canada. Quebec lives off the fruits of the rest of Canada's labor, and feels entitled to it. To show their appreciation, they elect a separatist party to the majority of their federal seats in every election since 1993. People are finally starting to wake up to the scam. Desperate times do create opportunities. When money is tight, people start watching where their dollars go.

On that note, I hope the National Post survives as a newspaper. You'd never see this kind of idea in the Globe and Mail, and certainly not the Star.

Sending Equalization Payments to Ontario

Looks like Ontario joins the money draining provinces along with Quebec, Manitoba and the Maritimes. Ontario now on the dole

Ontario is now a province of haves and have-not.

As of today, the province is an official recipient of equalization payments for the first time in its history, joining other "have-not" provinces that receive monthly cheques from the federal government.

Yet just the day before, the province released its Sunshine List that shows 53,572 people who work in the Ontario public sector made more than $100,000 in 2008.

Overall, the list of publicly funded "haves" has once again grown much faster than Ontario's economy -- up 26% from last year. It's now almost double what it was in 2005 and includes 10% of the entire Ontario Public Service.

(...)

Ontario will also be the beneficiary of $347 million in equalization payments from the federal government this year to help the province offer public services that are comparable to other provinces in the federation.

No news yet if this has made a dent in province's "centre of the universe" smugness. Those hicks that they dismiss in the west are paying the bills.

Hat tip: Pat

Ontario HRC Harass Business Owner

We've seen so many of these ridiculous "human rights" complaints. They're beyond parody:

The middle-aged woman with the man's voice, among other unseen attributes, turned out to be a transsexual who had yet to undergo the surgical transformation from male to female.

And now, her request to join the gym has landed Mr. Fulton before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

(...)

"I will be a homeless person, living in the street and eating out of a gutter, before they get a penny out of me," Mr. Fulton said after yesterday's fruitless mediation, which ended short of its scheduled three hours. "I'm stubborn, and I feel like I'm being pushed around by these people."

The Ontario Human Rights Code forbids discrimination or harassment based on sex, which includes issues of gender identity.

(...)

"I think the important thing to remember there is how they identify themselves; what their sense is, that they are living as a man or living as a woman," Ms. Edwards said. "Regardless of whether they're preop or postop, it's their lived gender that's important."

Mr. Fulton, however, cited a section in the same rights code which allows service providers to restrict access to facilities "to persons of the same sex on the ground of public decency." And to his mind, the display of male genitalia, even on someone who self-identifies as a woman, could be construed as indecent by other women at his gym.

They're trying to ruin this guy's life over making a common sense business decision. This makes me extremely angry. Imagine a woman in the club encountering a guy with a - excuse the term-dick in the shower or change room. They would resign their membership.

It's legal to get a sex-change operation. (I would debate that it shouldn't be, that it is subjective psychology and mutilation, but I can argue that another time.) But for god sakes, it's your choice to do it. You are going to have to put up with the inconveniences. This business owner had the unfortune that "she" walked into his life.

Ontario a 'Have Not' Province

I never thought I'd see this in my lifetime.

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced yesterday that for the first time in the history of the 51-year-old equalization program, Ontario will receive $347 million next year.

Its going to be hard to keep calling yourself Centre of the Universe, isn't it, now that you're welfare bums? Are Ontarioans finally going to start realizing that they have to move on from The Auto Pact? (And Liberal Federalism?)

Considering my Why Isn't Quebec an Independent Country post, I found this snippet interesting:

Of the total $14.2 billion in equalization payments to six Canadian provinces next year, Quebec alone will get $8.35 billion --59 per cent of the pot. By contrast, Ontario, Canada's largest province which generates 40 per cent of the national economy, will receive only $7 million more than Prince Edward Island.

But they elected a majority of seats every election since 1993 to a separatist party. For goodness sake, just leave already.