Candidate for Pirate Party, Kelowna-Lake Country

[CJT84]

so reading your post on the economy, you advocate better copyright laws (I agree with that) but then you go off on a protectionist rant about our natural resources. That doesn't make sense to me, why should we be protectionist when regards to lumber and not protectionist when regards copyright?

[CJT84]

Where do you stand on healthcare,

the economy... you know, the things that matter.

The economy is too reliant on the EXPORT of RAW materials. Where do our lumber exports go? To the States, where they are processed into final products. WE SHOULD BE DOING THAT!!! We should be processing the lumber into 2×4’s and plywood sheets before they cross the border, and instead our raw logs are going south of the 49th parallel to be processed there. Same with the oil from our oilsands projects… pumped to refineries that are south of the 49th, after which the processed fuel is trucked back up to Canada to be sold for prices that are much higher than if we were to refine it here.

Wrong, if that were the case with oil refinement then we would be doing it here. The fact is the US has all the infrastructure already built and the workforce already trained to refine oil. If Canada were to do the same thing we would have to build more refineries which are expensive given also safety standards and environmental standards, train workers and possibly have to hire foreign workers to get up to a similar capacity a the USA which would cost even more money.

Even Sun-Rype is in on this… Many of the local fruits it uses are bought up by U.S. companies, who truck it down past the border, and then ship it right back up to Sun-Rype. My family once met this trucker whose whole job was to take fruit from local packing houses, bring it down past the border into Oroville, and then turn around and bring it right back up to the Sun-Rype factory. How efficient is that?

Very effecient actually and cheaper, otherwise Sunrype wouldn't be doing it in the first place. What you've described though can't be accurate or you're leaving something out of your statement. Perhaps they send the stuff down to Oroville for inspection to meet US standards before it can be shipped to the US, there's a lot that could be going on there.

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[rekabis]

so reading your post on the economy, you advocate better copyright laws (I agree with that)

If by “better” you mean “stronger” or “more comprehensive”, then you misread my posts.

The Pirate Party, as a whole, is dedicated significant copyright and patent reforms. And NOT in the direction that most governments are heading. Most of our members joined because we believe that patents and copyrights are a scourge on our free-market economy. That they are, essentially, intellectual monopolies.

While the Pirate Party advocates a moderate reformation path, there are many members who would gladfully, gleefully and wholeheartedly tear down virtually all patents and the vast majority of copyrights (with the remaining few having significant restrictions imposed). You can count yours truly among them. I am very much of a true free-market capitalist, and see patents and copyrights as nothing more than socialist/communistic attempts to block and destroy innovation, creativity and progress.

DCMA (and its incoming Canadian equivalent) is perhaps the most damaging of all -- for example, when you buy a car, you can do what you want with it, including modifying it to the point where it is no longer road worthy. And about the most that will happen is that you won’t be able to get insurance for it. Does that mean you can’t drive it? Hardly, just not on public roads. There is nothing stopping you from driving it on private land or hauling it up to somewhere remote (off public roads) and doing some off-roading. And yet, with DCMA and its Canadian equivalent, that right is taken away from you. Your property is no longer your own -- even though you paid for it in full, you are no longer able to modify it as doing so will land you in jail with a hefty fine. And this is just wrong.

but then you go off on a protectionist rant about our natural resources. That doesn't make sense to me, why should we be protectionist when regards to lumber and not protectionist when regards copyright?

What I am advocating is not protectionist. It costs us just as much to refine a litre of gasoline as it does to do so in the States. And yet, we are shipping all of our crude oil to the States, just so they can refine it and sell it back to us at a higher price (with the round-trip shipping costs added in) than what we would pay if it were refined here.

The same goes for lumber -- we ship raw longs or mostly -raw lumber to the states, where it gets converted into refined lumber and wood products. Why does our lumber have to cross the border unrefined? Why do Canadian workers have to loose out to jobs in the States?

In the end, it is all about politics. We send our crude to the States for refining, because it ensures that they buy virtually all of our excess. Nevermind that the Europeans, with their ≈$8/litre gas, would kill to get a hold of our gas at even $2/litre. Because we are so politically buddy-buddy with the States, the jobs that could go into refining Canadian crude into gasoline that we ourselves consume, are shipped south of the border rather than keeping it in the country.

Now, it would be protectionist if we refined gasoline here, and then subsidized it so it was more competitive on the international market. But I am not advocating subsidizing the gas, just that we refine it here to ensure jobs for Canadians (which will make domestic prices go down). If the excess ends up being uncompetitive on the international market (bloody unlikely, considering European gas prices), then we produce only enough to satisfy our own needs and resume shipping crude for the US market alone. After all, that *is* the free-market way. Let’s satisfy our own market by processing the raw materials more cheaply at home, and see if we can’t do that abroad as well.

One final piece of food for thought: The highest gas prices in the States are now hitting $4/gallon. That’s about $1.05/litre, considering that there is about 3.8 litres per gallon. Why is the average price of gas in Canada sitting at $1.20/litre? Because we ship our crude to the States for them to refine and ship the gas back up to us. They get the benefit of cheaper gas, and we get the “benefit” of having a single buyer for our excess oil sands reserves. Never mind that Canada is the State’s largest source of crude oil (why aren’t we using our leverage?), we can afford to refine our own gasoline and sell it on the open market. Were we to do so, our gasoline would be very competitive in almost any first-world country.

[kina]

Well Rekabis, I just wanted to congratulate you on your decision. It's nice to see some alternative views out there on the political scene. Good luck.