Daryl

This is an idea that needs to be revisited. A shorter marine route from the prairies to export markets.

It would open up the West to greater trade with Europe.

Is that even possible? If so, it is an eye opener for what is happening in the American economy and what is causing the MAGA movement.

Let's follow the evidence.

According to this article https://www.npr.org/2025/05/09/nx-s1-5375146/trump-tariffs-factory-jobs-nostalgia?

there are 12.7 million manufacturing jobs in America, down from an all-time high of 19.6 million in 1979.

According to this data base,

https://www.statista.com/statistics/437763/employment-level-in-canada-by-industry/

there are 1.8 million manufacturing jobs in Canada. Applying the standard 1-to-10 ratio (population ratio) that means scaled up proportionate to population Canada would have the equivalent of 18 million manufacturing jobs, just short of America's all time high of almost 50 years ago, let alone the current US job rate.

That caught me completely off guard. Puts a whole new perspective on what Trump is saying about the dire state of the US. Even compared to Canada, the US is in the pits.

Here is another data bomb. One quarter of those US manufacturing jobs are held by immigrants. Not sure WHAT to make of that one.

America does have a problem regarding manufacturing jobs. But tariffs certainly are NOT the solution. If Canada can out-perform the US per capita without the trade barriers of tariffs, exactly what does that say about the condition America is in?

Canada once had an 'at the time' super-modern steel industry. Stelco and Dofasco were on the leading edge of steel making tech, using the most advanced for-the-time automated systems. But they fell behind European and Asian technology, became inefficient, and essentially closed up shop. If Canada us to be competitive, we need to completely rethink how we do things. For instance, here is an example of the newest steel making technology that is carbon-friendly, and Canada needs to take a serious look at it.

This is the type of investment needed in Canada.

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/sweden-green-hydrogen-powered-steel

I never knew Canada was even in this game.

Seems this company lost a substantial part of their American investment money (Bezos), and is in danger of shutting down completely. Time for our federal government to come to the plate.

Or maybe China will fill the funding shortfall, and share the prize. Unlimited fusion power in a decade or so.

Basic Privacy Protection 101.

Chapter 1.

Never, ever store the personal data in the same place as the person's name.

Store the data using a numeric ID tag,and the actual name in another database, heavily encrypted, that links the name to the ID tag. The two files are not in the same database, not even in the same place (server farm). It takes two different access methods to connect the data to the name, and can only be done on the destination computer.

The best thing that could happen to the world is for the Cardinals to out-do their previous record of three years to select a new Pope.

Imagine three years without a foreigner telling us what we should think, what we should believe, what we should do, how we should run our lives, how we should vote.

Maybe we will learn how to take back our own lives from the influence of foreign powers.

Wow. A new 'politicized' and 'sanitized' term for 'severe budget deficit spending' - "a new path to budget balance'. At least they could be half-truthful and include 'a new LONGER path to balanced budgets'.

We are not in a 'deficit budget' position. we are just in a 'new path to a balanced budget'.

So it is no longer just stupidity n the CPC ranks, it is back to Scheer stupidity.

Fascism is alive and well in the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church

The events around the selection of the next Pope epitomize the fascist win-lose adversarial winner-take-all zeitgeist of Western culture.

I want to emphasize that I am referring to the governance of the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church, not the actual Christian theology, which are quite different. The ‘Empire’ part, not the ‘church’ (lower case ‘c’) part. The Pope leads the Church as if it were an Empire, not a religious theology. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church IS a direct descendant of the Roman Empire, not the church founded by Jesus.

For the selection of the Pope to be decided purely by adversarial politics and intimidation, misinformation, deliberate lies, and outright corrupted morality and ethics and not by theology, says everything that is needed to know about the true purpose of the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church - power to dominate and control the people. Fascism at its finest.

Can you imagine the PM and leading political party of Canada being as deeply committed to Canadian sovereignty and Canadian identity as the BQ and particularly Jacques Parizeau is to Quebec sovereignty and identity?

Whatever your feelings towards the BQ are, it can not be doubted that they are tremendously effective in advocating for laws and legislation that protect cultural identity and sovereignty.