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Canadian DMCA Won't Include Consumer Rights
An anonymous reader writes "As protests
mount over the Canadian DMCA, law professor Michael Geist is now reporting
that the government plans to delay addressing fair use and consumer
copyright concerns such as the blank media tax for years. While the
U.S. copyright lobby gets their DMCA, consumers will get a panel to
eventually consider possible changes to the law. Many Canadians
are responding today with a mass
phone-in to Industry Minister Jim Prentice to protest the policy
plans."
Canadian DMCA Won't Include Consumer Rights
What kind of expectation of special treatment is that? If consumers want rights they can pay for them just like everybody else!
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
Scholarships and other income tax changes are good though Employment Credit does hit some small business people - you can't deduct it unless you incorporate your business. Sucks to have a proprietorship. While the scholarships change simplified the tax system, the employment credit complicated it. Anyway, I basically only disagree with the GST cut in Conservatives fiscal policy. The corporate tax cut was really needed. This is what will keep a lot of small/medium businesses in Canada and allow current ones to re-invest.
:( I haven't heard what Dion's great plan is either, but then Layton, while a Good Guy, is kind of out there in the left field ;)
Kyoto protocol, on the surface, does seem really screwed up. I mean, why is China off the hook? Or India? Then I realized something - this is NOT about cutting CO2 and taxing but about changing the economy from a carbon based economy to a hydrogen based economy. Oil/gas is running out as you can see that by ever increasing fuel prices. By imposing regulation of carbon emissions, Kyoto is an attempt to allow a free-market economy to develop technology and infrastructure that is sorely needed *before* hydrogen economy can function. If we run out of oil (aka. oil @ $300/barrel? $500? $1000? oil will always be there - just name the price when it is unreachable) before we have infrastructure in place for hydrogen economy, we will have a depression that we haven't seen in our lifetimes. And who will be screwed if we run out of oil but have Kyoto implemented? Well, China and other countries not prepared. Kyoto is an investment in technology that would make Canada's expertise very valuable in not so distant future. And this is not even brining in global warming (aka. climate change) which will cost Canada's economy in the long run much more than Kyoto ever would.
Of course, instead of doing this, the no-brain politicians are now putting money into more subsidies for farmers to plant food crops to make fuel for cars. That's a great idea.
Aside: Oil was $20/barrel about 5 years ago and now it is $95/barrel. Now, if you price it in CND or EUR, ignoring USD devaluation, that would still be 3 times the current price (almost 5x in USD). If this trend continues, will people afford $300/barrel oil in 2012? (aka. $3-4/L gas) $1000/barel in 2030? (aka. $13-15/L gas)
With regards to GST, I just received a brochure (from the Conservative party) that their little 1% tax cut costs $6,000,000,000 in revenue. Now, assuming that 75% of people actually spends that money and that we have 35M people in Canada, that means, the revenue that is "lost" is about $230 per taxpayer. This means that each of these people would have to spend $23,000 on non-mortgage, non-food stuffs *per year* for this tax cut to be worth it (vs. income tax cut). Or a family of 4 (2 kids that don't spend anything + 2 adults), that would mean at least $46,000 *post income tax* money spent!! That means you need to have about $75,000 pre-tax income that is *extra* and disposable - not with today's mortgages! Now, giving $230 to each taxpayer by raising the lowest income tax bracket by $1,500 to $11,000 immediately, well, would give you $230. But then if one spends $1,000,000 a year on crap, $230 is useless as that 1% tax cut just gave you a nice $10,000 bonus. On the other hand, if you only make $30,000 a year and pay $15,000 in rent and another $5,000 in food and then $5,000 in income taxes, you only have $5,000 disposable income left meaning 1% tax cut just saved you whopping $50. The latter is the reality for most Canadians.
GST is not that bad of a tax as it hits end consumers on discretionary spending only. PST tends to a A LOT worse because in many provinces, business expenses are taxable unlike with GST, meaning that it hits business bottom line as well as end-consumers. And if you hit business bottom line, you and up with less business => unemployment. PST => HST is a great move for business, yet sadly not followed by provinces like Ontario or Manitoba
Kyoto was created in 1998 before China was the Job stealing polution machine that it is today. China was the intended effect of Kyoto which wasn't to curb Global warming. It was to redistribute wealth and prop up third world countries. Global warming was just the scare tactic to allow countries to be pressured into accepting it. Do you remember all the hostility towards America because we didn't jump on? And yet Kyoto doesn't reduce anything on it's own merits alone, out of the 135 or 237 countries, less then 40 of them have limits and of those only 35 were supposed to reduce emissions below their current limits. 2 of those countries had limits above their current emissions and could in effect sell credits for a period of time. And something else to note, no country has made a substantial reduction in emissions since the conception of Kyoto. Accounting errors have made it look like some where made but they haven't made any. Germany who seems to be the leader on paper can attribute the majority of their reductions to accounting issues just before they were rejoined with the Eastern block.
If global warming is real, And I'm saying it is or isn't, Kyoto was just using it as a means to implement an unrelated strategy of developing third world countries and redistributing the first world wealth. A carbon tax is short sighted and does much of the same while not reducing or controlling anything. It even risks the economic security of some countries which will increase the viability of war and conflicts. It (a carbon tax) is a bad idea outside anything but an imaginary playground that doesn't take ego, nationalism, and human nature into consideration. As a voter from from the south of canada, I demand that politicians take a deep look between the hype to push ulterior motives and the actual evidence with the actual situation and make policy according to real and rational thought concerning the real implications of it. If this means addressing global warming, then be it. But it needs to be done in a way that isn't sensationalized by hidden agendas and emotion to cover those agendas up.