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Ok, well I don't see what Microsoft's recruiting practices have to do with any of that. But let's put that aside for now. Firstly, your use of statistics is wrong. Canada is not a wealthier country than the US. The US is in aggregate wealthier than Canada. Median wealth and income are merely just one measure of the distribution of that wealth and income. What you're effectively saying is we have more money that you guys, but because you guys have less income inequality you should contribute more because we don't wanna bother our rich folks. In addition as others have pointed here wealth statistics are distorted by a bunch of things and should not be taken at face value. Secondly, Canada doing something for illegal immigrants is an oxymoron. A government exists for the purpose of the enforcement of laws. No legitimate government will stand for or encourage the violation of its laws. So Canada cannot actually encourage illegal migration. Thirdly, migrations do actually happen for reasons outside of a country's control. This is why we have asylum and refugee programs. In those areas Canada punches above its weight and above the US. This is despite the Unites States' larger income and wealth. If the US was to proportionally take in as many refugees and asylum seekers as Canada, the US should take in 300,000-450,000 per year. That number is greater than the US's refugee quota plus the illegal immigration into the US. So I'd say that Canada does enough.

+1. CPP is an exceptional success story! Surprisingly it is a clone of some union's work. CPPIB is part of what I like to call professional government. Where you leave politics out of things and you run things professionally for the people. In Canada we have implemented this approach in several areas to great success and I would like to see more of it. One thing in particular I like aside from the performance of the CPPIB team is the segregation fact where it's obvious how much money there is. Thus as CPPIB continues to perform and the coffers fill the government can't obfuscate behind a veil of bullshit. They'll have to lower payroll taxes or increase CPP payout. I favour increased payout btw. One other particular area I'd like this to be applied is health insurance. I'd like health taxes to be segregated from general revenue and handled like CPP. When you think about it health insurance is not that different that life insurance (pensions). Lastly, it's worth mentioning that our retirement system was a complete basket case similar to the US 2 decades ago when the government decided to reform it. Basically retirements are not a lost cause - mission impossible style. Your governments just have to get off their ass and do the right thing.

From what you write it seems like you have no idea what you're talking about. Is there point you're trying to arrive at?

No, Canada is not an exclusive club like Switzerland. Though exclusive types types do get let in. They mostly go to Vancouver. I'd say that you probably didn't understand the requirements for immigration. The system is actually quite straight forward and from what I've picked up here I'd say that someone like you (though not you personally) would qualify easily. You have a usable post secondary education, you have work experience, you don't have a criminal record, you speak English fluently, and have money to support yourself and your family for a while. You're in. Easily! The process will be really smooth and once you're approved you would have 1 year to present yourself at a point of entry and then you and your family become permanent Canadian residents. After you've been a resident for 3 years you're eligible to apply for citizenship. The reason why I say you personally would not qualify is that I remember you mentioning that you've had a stroke a while back. That would cause you to fail the medical requirements for immigration. However, this is an unfortunate fact that is particular to you as a person. A generic candidate with your background would be quite welcome here.

From what you write it seems like you have no idea what you're talking about.

The customer would pay US sales tax. And the US has a far higher threshold at $800. But even if you were interested in the tax argument all it implies is that you should raise the deminimus until the cost of administering equals the tax collected which is a far higher level that we have now. I don't care that the consumer pays US sales tax. You're a Canadian consumer, you pay Canadian sales tax. The idea that a country would send its tax receipts to another country is absurd - but if the US would like to remit its tax receipts to Canada I would support staffing the acceptance window 24/7 8). And yes, I am concerned about the revenue aspect if it. That's why I said that I would fully support simplifying the collection process to a great degree. That should lower the collection cost a lot. Then you should be a Luddite since technology has done more to destroy whole sectors of the economy to "selfishly save a buck" as you put it than trade ever will. The whole history of progress of capitalism is the selfish evil process you described above of wiping out whole sectors of the economy systematically. And nearly every single thing we value including all scientific, technological, and social progress would basically not exist if it weren't for that. Even Karl Marx understood that. I think you misunderstood what I meant. I have no problem with businesses duking it out in the great colosseum of the marketplace. As you say technology has always played a big part in that bloody sport. I'm fine with that too. What I'm not fine with is putting my hand on the scale to tip it. Such as saying that foreign businesses don't have to collect/remit sales tax whereas domestic ones do. These are the rules. Play within them. May the best one win. Best of luck.

Basically this. I don't see the reason why you should go ahead and behave like an absolute dick just because the internet may provide you with some veil of anonymity. But for reason people do. But I wouldn't write anything here that I wouldn't say to someone in person. Then there's always common sense on how to use the internet. I don't post drunk pictures of myself on Instagram and I don't feel the need to "share" everything about myself. As an example, if you don't get hired because your prospective employer is concerned about hiring on alcoholic because of all the pictures you have on facebook or instagram of you partying, it's not the internet's fault. It's your fault. The one thing that's really changed with technology is not the Internet's seemingly ability to back up stuff. It's that today there's always a camera next to you ready to record you and document usually your bad deeds. Every single one of us has done something bad or something we're not proud of at one point or another. In the past it was a private matter that you would end up regretting or making amends for. Today It has a very real possibility of being a public issue and well documented. My guess is that technology usage etiquette will evolve in society otherwise everyone will be a villain.

You'll have to be more specific about what you're looking for. The academic economics stuff tends to focus more on dynamics of trade. But I think a good place to start looking at "facts" is the WTO. They have a lot of information.

Well you can call it propaganda. But the EU overproduces and the US over produces. I can't say definitely about the rest but what I've called there is at least 1/2 of global supply. Nevertheless, you've started this thread about Canadian tariffs. They are totally justified against a trading partner that wants to seriously dump in your market. Whether we keep or don't keep supply management is an internal matter that has nothing to do with dairy tariffs or trade. Maybe you want to start a thread called "I want to bitch about Canadian Supply Management" .

Theranos is the fault of the media?! Get the outta here man! The investors who kept giving it money had nothing to do with it? Give me a break. And old-power apparatchiks? Mad dog is the current secretary of defense.

TTIP died because of Buy American regulations, insistence from the US for provisions that would weaken signatories ability to negotiate drug prices, and the proposed investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.

I would not support eliminating the de-minimus threshold. This is why: Let's say that a Canadian retailer imports an US product for sale in Canada. When a customer purchases that product the customer has to pay sales tax. If the customer instead goes and purchases that product across the border (or from a US e-tailer) then the customer would pay no sales tax. This logically makes no sense to me, aside from wiping out the Canadian retail sector. I guess I'm not so selfish to wipe out entire sectors of the economy in order to save a buck. One also has to wonder, if one goes about intentionally and systematically wiping out sectors of one's economy, how many bucks will be left for one to save? However I would wholeheartedly support reforming the current system in order to greatly simplify the collection of applicable taxes. Something as simple as swiping one's credit card at the border gate. EDIT: From personal experience, the Canadian border guards are very liberal in not enforcing the de-minimus. So in reality the threshold is significantly higher than what is codified.

As rukawa mentioned I already went into this in a previous post. Trade agreements are peppered with little things like this. But you've also answered your own question: Yes NAFTA did exactly that! Of course Americans don't care about that. They just want to rouse the hoards against big, bad, scary Canada. Now the US is being hypocritical and disingenuous. Yes, the US also has provisions like this one. For example a 350% tariff for tobacco. But there are others as well. SJ pointed out a few more. On dairy specifically. Dairy is one of those industries prone to overproduce and destroy themselves. Countries deal with this in different ways. Canada uses supply management. The US uses huge subsidies. In fact the whole US dairy industry produces at a loss. The only thing that keeps it going are huge subsidies. Canada does not subsidies producers. This is the very definition of dumping. So under NAFTA the US was given a tariff free quota for dairy exports into Canada and above that they have to pay a steep tariff. This was actually very fair! The opposite of VERY UNFAIR. Ask yourself, would the US accept for Canada to heavily subsidize one of its industries and then dump its output in the US? If Canada would drop its dairy tariffs and we don't move to heavily subsidize dairy then the whole industry would be wiped out because they wouldn't be able to compete with loss making US products. Now as rukawa pointed out, as a selfish and self centered consumer, should I care? If the US taxpayer wants to put money in my pocked why should I stop him? I should just tell the Canadian dairy farmer, sorry, sucks to be you, I'm getting mine. And I may even be inclined to do that if the US would be a reliable, friendly, and fair partner. But as it's proving out, the US is anything but that. The US is an asshole who doesn't mind screwing it's best friend to try to make a buck. So I'll stick with the status quo because I have no guarantees that once the US destroys the Canadian dairy industry it won't move to screw me on the price of dairy. In regards to German cars, as Eli posted the EU tariff is 10% not 25%. Moreover the EU wants to eliminate auto tariffs on trade with the US. Dropping most goods tariffs between the US and the EU was part of the TTIP. Negotiations for TTIP failed because the US wasn't happy to just have a free trade deal. A facset summary for TTIP trade in goods is below: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2015/january/tradoc_152998.1%20Trade%20in%20goods%20and%20customs%20tariffs.pdf

I bought a little more FGE.TO. Thinking ops are slowly improving and any weakness in the CAD is a tailwind. But perhaps I should be thinking more about general market risk here and a broadening trade war. If you like FGE, I wouldn't be too concerned about trade war. Where are Americans gonna get wood to build their houses from?

Nothing in Canada

Pretty much agree with Cardboard here. The US seems to not place much value or has forgotten entirely the value of having a stable, developed, and peaceful trading partner and neighbor. There's nothing like a little oil shortage to focus the mind. Though I would say, if the Americans really had balls they would place tariff on oil and energy imports.

There is indeed something called a departure tax. It's not some fee that you need to pay in order to leave or anything like that. It arises from the fact that in Canada you can defer you taxes on capital gains until you sell the investment. So when you permanently leave Canada for another jurisdiction you trigger a deemed disposition and have to pay tax on outstanding capital gains. Which is totally fair btw, you don't get to avoid paying taxes on capital gains by skipping town. Also in many cases you can't avoid paying the tax just by taking off. By virtue of tax treaties we have with many countries the tax authority in your new jurisdiction will collect the tax owing on behalf of the Canadian government. I don't think we have this agreement in place with China, but I'm not sure. If we don't I think we will in the not too distant future. China wants to collect on its taxes as well and given the level of wealth transfer between China and Canada I figure China is interested in the topic.

More properly, estate tax the capital gains due on death. I don't understand what you are trying to say? Should one not have to pay taxes on capital gains? Also specifically tax arising from terminal returns there are ways to mitigate or avoid them all together. If one is looking at a large tax bill, then one has the resources to engage engage the services of competent estate planners.

To answer your question, no he's not anyone of importance. He's a cartoonist who likes to chime in on politics. I don't think he's presenting facts fairly but instead he's presenting his opinion and ideology. Take this little tidbit: Ok, so who will the voters stand behind then? The leaders of all three majour parties unequivocally support supply management. Or this little bit: Nope, that wasn't even close to one of the country's higher profile debates. I guess maybe it would break the top 50 on a slow news day. Oh, also there are not hoards of Canadians crossing the boarder every day in a desperate hope to save $1.49 on dairy. Now ignoring this fool let's take a closer look at the facts. Canada has supply management. We restrict production of certain ag goods (dairly, eggs, poultry) which results in higher prices for Canadians. This is mostly a private matter. The US has massive farm subsidies. In fact the US subsidies for dairy are larger than the profits of the dairy sector. So the US is basically straight up dumping dairy. So when Canada and the US got to talking NAFTA, Canada didn't much care for scrapping supply management and we sure weren't gonna let the US dump dairy. The US didn't really want to cut farm subsidies to dairies either. So we agreed to side pocket this bit. We get to keep supply management and the US gets to keep its subsidies. In order to prevent dumping, Canada will get to impose tariffs to prevent US dumping. It was all good because the trade relationship is so deep and broad that dairy is just a speck of dust on the windshield. This is how responsible adults do things. Also these provisions were codified into law. Now for the boring bits. Every free trade agreement of the face of the planet contains a "national security" loop hole. You must keep in mind that free trade agreements are usually ratified by parliament (also in the case of the US). So they are actually laws in their countries. But the national security loophole generally allows the executive to go around them for the obvious reasons for national security. Now it was laughable when it was presented that Canadian steel and aluminium present a threat to the national security of the United States. But imposing steel and aluminium tariffs against Canada for Canadian dairy tariffs under national security is illegal. Unless of course we are egging the US's national security. But of course none of this matters. Furthermore, The Donald of course doesn't give a hoot about dairies. He's just found a little loose piece of string he can pull at to create the discord that he relishes. He probably thinks that he can tweet Canada into submission. But Canada isn't Rosie O'Donell. Also Canada doesn't conduct foreign and economic policy via twitter.

Spekulatius, I respectfully disagree. In a normal business setting like company to company talks what you say is true. But now Trump may be a douche bag but he is still the president of the united states. Canada as a country has deep and intertwined interests with the US. Both economic - NAFTA - and security - NORAD, NATO. We can't act like a petulant child and just talk only to the administrations we like and ignore the ones we don't. There's too much at stake. But just because we talk and negotiate doesn't mean we have to sign anything. We don't have to give our country away. We must be reasonable and stay firm on the parts that are unreasonable. Another thing to note is that when while Trump likes to do his real estate developer/Apprentice thing when you talk to Canada, you don't actually talk to some guy from Brooklyn flying by the seat of his pants. We have a deep bench of seasoned professionals, professional negotiators, and a fully staffed Foreign Affairs department. A lot of these guys have long standing relationships with their US contacts due to our deep relationship. And these aren't the types of people that get their panties in a twist because Trump tweeted something. Canada hasn't just been negotiating with Commerce or the Trade Representative. Canada has been running a full court press. Talking to Governors, Senators, Congressmen, covering all the angles. Negotiating in good faith, sticking to the facts, and grinding it out. Frankly, this is what I expect of a professional government doing the work for its people.

There is no estate tax in Canada. But yes, property taxes are a form of capital taxes. Also not until long ago we had corporate capital taxes. So I don't think there's really a rubicon there to be crossed.

Once Canada agrees to a sunset clause why would a future US administration take it out. Even if it's a reasonable and competent administration, especially if it's a reasonable and competent administration. A US administration represents and works for the people of the US a sunset obviously benefits them and once we agree to that it won't come put for free. We'll have to make further concessions to the US. That's the way it works in these negotiations, you don't give anything away unless you get something in return. So no, Canada won't agree to a sunset clause.

I wouldn't be so quick to declare a victory because the converse is also true. If you are looking to produce an export good why in your right mind would invest in production in the US. If you produce a mixed good that you sell domestically and abroad why would you invest to expand production when you could be hit with retaliatory tariffs at any moment? Also even with tariffs why would a company invest in US production in an area where it's at a comparative disadvantage when a few years from now this lunacy can go away? For example why would a company invest in aluminium capacity when in the near future it's at risk of competing with Quebec aluminium who's cost it has no hope of matching? Furthermore, don't you put American exports at risk when you tax their materials? Aren't Airbus planes gonna be cheaper than Boeing if Boeing has to pay 10% more for aluminium? What about autos? Those things use A LOT of aluminium these days. If demand goes down for these products won't there be layoffs? What about the industries that are targeted by retaliatory tariffs? Harley is already doing layoffs. Won't those get worse when Europe slaps tariff on its products? Is this what victory looks like? So much winning...

The reason why it's a show stopper is because it's highly disruptive to business. Businesses like continuity and stability of the environment they operate in. If For example, if I'm looking to build a factory that will also service the US I'm planning to have that factory for more than 5 years. If I don't know whether Canada will have free trade with the US in 5 years, will I make that investment? I'm not so sure. NAFTA doesn't even need to get rescinded, it could just be tweaked a little just enough to screw my business. That's not a good business environment to operate in. Yes NAFTA could be rescinded at any time. But the assumption is that it won't because it would be quite damaging to the party that pulls out. That's why countries sign treaties as opposed to making deals with individual administrations that can change with political whims. Agreeing to a sunset clause basically guarantees that we go through the current shit show every 5 years. And nobody trusts US politicians to do the right thing. The US debt ceiling was put in place to make it easier for the US Treasury to borrow. Instead is now used as a weapon with politicians threatening to put the United States in default. Why would we import that insanity and instability into our business climate? This is why a sunset clause is a show stopper. You're better off with no treaty than one with a sunset clause. Agreeing to a sunset clause would be a trade malpractice and a colossally stupid thing to do.

My apologies. KJP is correct. Apparently there has been a ruling in 2011 by the US Court of Appeals that overturned the labeling ban.