standing room only in SkyTrain

[licks2nite]

The snow, birds, branches, rails etc. etc. through the northside cause at least 90% of the grief.

Because 90% of the track is in Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster.

 

[licks2nite]

This part is easy. All we have to do is decide that we're willing to work for the same wages they pay in Asia, Mexico, Africa or wherever.

Or alternatively we can all decide not to buy anything that isn't made in Canada or another high-wage jurisdiction.

See how easy it could be? All we have to do is have the entire Canadian population to agree to work for low wages, or to only buy more expensive products. You go first ...

Believe it or not there was a time when Canada had an export manufacturing sector and Canadians made products for themselves and each other. During those times one person in a household could earn enough in an 8 hour job 5 days a week in a short commute to work to buy and pay off a mortgage on a single family detached home.

You may have read lately and come across articles about China that was allowed into the World Trade Organization less than 2 decades ago. China has been allowed to supply just about anything and everything now attained from patented research supplied by Western nations. You'd read about the incredible modernization and wealth since 2 decades in the coastal region of China that comprises about half the population where manufacturing is done. It's no coincidence that job skills translated into products produce wealth. Wealth that rightly belongs to those producing products.

Canada lags badly on both counts of lost manufacturing at home and in creating patented research.

 

[MissingOne]

Believe it or not there was a time when Canada had an export manufacturing sector and Canadians made products for themselves and each other. During those times one person in a household could earn enough in an 8 hour job 5 days a week in a short commute to work to buy and pay off a mortgage on a single family detached home.

I am old enough to remember that period. I still live in that world, in a way. I live in a neighbourhood of families where men go to work every day and women are at home with kids. Or, for those with older children, chauffeuring the kids hither and yon.

It's not that I live in some sort of time warp. It's just that it's a rural area that attracts people who make certain types of choices. And the men who go to work every day aren't going to factories to manufacture things. They tend to fall into two groups. Professionals with at least one university degree, or guys who work in construction. If we ever get a real slump in housing construction, lots of families will be in trouble.

 

[licks2nite]

I am old enough to remember that period. I still live in that world, in a way. I live in a neighbourhood of families where men go to work every day and women are at home with kids. Or, for those with older children, chauffeuring the kids hither and yon.

It's not that I live in some sort of time warp. It's just that it's a rural area that attracts people who make certain types of choices. And the men who go to work every day aren't going to factories to manufacture things. They tend to fall into two groups. Professionals with at least one university degree, or guys who work in construction. If we ever get a real slump in housing construction, lots of families will be in trouble.

For Canada it's been the "some-assembly-required" mime. Aside from some land, cut wood and cement mix, each home, commercial and government building in Canada is another consumer exercise requiring a myriad of imported products. That's only the beginning of the consumer imports. Following all the imported tools & machinery to install all the components in construction, the new inhabitants will import another raft of imported goods to fill their homes, places of work and public facilities. All paid in Canadian dollars "earned" in Canadian businesses and public services that have to import to keep functioning.