Quote Originally Posted by Football16:
That was no NATO obligation for Canada to start fighting Afghans versus hunting for Osama Bin Laden which was fine but of course it got pushed to the battle.

My comment was directed only at the implication that Canada was 'pressured' by the US to get involved - the drift and continued involvement are other matters entirely and your frustration is certainly valid.

As a guy sitting on two very good Canadian corporate pensions and who has got also a Canadian Pension Plan (based on my contribution as a worker) and soon to hit 65 and my fourth pension at 65 I don't see the same opportunities for today's youth - not our children and who knows what when the grandchildren are old enough to go to college.

Good for you. Of course, we have both been more fortunate than most. But your attitude, while widely held, is I think too pessimistic. Perhaps part of your concern is that the world is a bit more competitive now and skills - and education - are at even more of a premium. Since more people have access to education, it is more difficult to be competitive. I worry about my kids also, but what is the alternative? It used to be that a rich kid could get into Harvard or Oxford based on connections alone, cruise through with a 'gentlemen's C' and become highly compensated. It was the Western version of 'guanxi'. The current system with mass education allows more people the opportunity and is, I think, more fair

I bitterly resent what is being done to today's youth with tuition fees set by guys my age who like me had the benefit of low cost education including my very cheap MBA vs. today high costs and market rating them. My BA cost me for tuition CAD$224 as it was my first semester and subsequent to that it was a free ride. At graduation I got a Gold Medal and CAD $500 cash so basically it was free. I was a University governor for a maximum term of 9 years and I know how low our fees were relative to the total cost. It was some 18% and much higher now with less good jobs.

That is an interesting point and an issue that is a big concern to me also. I was from a poorish family (father an impoverished newspaper editor) and got a good education at the University of California. There is no way I could have paid for the actual cost of my education. Of course, fees have gone up a lot over the past 25 years. I was in the UK last month, where unis are basically free, and the talk is of taxing uni graduates at a higher level to reimburse the state for their education. That makes some sense. I think a direct increase in fees would be better (as the California system is doing) but the point is, how does the government pay for higher education? To what extent should the direct beneficiaries (the students) be forced to pay?

When we went to college the public schools in the US and Canada were flush with cash. The real problem is that the system was unsustainable. 25-30 years ago fewer kids attended university, and there were relatively more workers to fund public universities. Now that the population is older, more and more funds are being directed towards the elderly. I don't think that the US is any different than Canada in that more and more of the government budgets are soaked up by entitlement programs (mostly for the old) which has the effect of squeezing out the money available for education and other public needs. So, the question is, how do we pay for public universities?


CAD$525,000 to keep one soldier there in a country that is responsible for 85% of the heroin in Canadian cities and towns. Why not do like the US used to do and destroy poppy crops? A very simple answer. If they do that the farmers join the Taliban earlier. If they don't they fight only after the crops are in.

Fair enough - I don't have a good answer for the situation in Afghanistan either. I would have been shocked if someone told me, four years ago, that things in Iraq looked relatively 'better'. The question is whether what we are doing there is really going to have a long run positive effect. I don't know.

But, regarding the budget, I still believe that it is entitlements that are squeezing out other forms of government spending (including the military - the UK coalition government is proposing, essentially, to get rid of the RAF). All countries have citizens that vote themselves nice things that can't be properly accounted for and end up as 'baked in' costs. Education suffers accordingly.



To me this is about what kind of world our nations for our own people.

Canadians are very luck the Conservatives have a minority government or this would be even worse.

"Afghanistan mission price tag passes 525,000 Dollar per soldier
Tally doesn't include salaries or equipment
BY MATTHEW FISHER

January 9, 2010

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — It costs taxpayers about $525,000 a year to keep one Canadian soldier in Afghanistan, according to the simplest calculation possible, which is to divide the approximately $1.5-billion cost of the mission for the 2009/2010 fiscal year by the 2,850 troops who are part of it."
Comments above, Football.