So, I live in Canada and my children are starting to get on my nerves. Well, the last thing I need is my offspring sullying the good family name. I plan to talk to them about it, but on my way to the canal I have a small accident. By the time I get that straightened out I am too late. My three daughters and my first wife, can’t remember how many I have, have driven into the locks and drowned. Distraught I flee the scene. Yeah, that’s it. That is exactly how it happened. Forget the paint scrapes on my front bumper and those recordings of me saying I would kill them a thousand times over, I was trying to be a good father. Only in Canada would I get a long drawn out trial.

Canada’s beloved Prime Minister was feeling quite satisfied in Davos. He was putting swords in the backs of his European counterparts when he decided that the folks at home were getting off easy. Tally Ho! Don’t think that you can retire at 65, that date is getting further away. Maybe 67 or 70.

Before going to the inviting confines of Switzerland, the PM met with all the First Nations representatives that could get a space at the table. The result? More consultations and more consultants equals more money down the drain. I have one question for the First Nation’s leaders – How can you draw a big salary if your people don’t have proper housing? Some of you could cut back on your take and actually build a house or two every year with the savings. One more thing. If I didn’t have proper sanitation and was using a bucket, I may get off my butt and go dig a hole and build an outhouse. It may not be warm, but outhouses served very well in trying circumstances. Better than a bucket and spreading the contents in front of your house. Only in Canada.

Isn’t it nice to hear that people from Europe and the U.S. love, love, luv luv luv, Nova Scotia. That fact that the roads suck, signage and amenities are third world, and promotion is misguided doesn’t deter the hardy from visiting. Who knew. Imagine if Nova Scotia ( and the rest of the Country for that matter ) did a good job. We would have to beat tourists away with stick. Oh, but we wouldn’t want that. It may change our quaint little way of life.

This country always gives me the warm and fuzzy’s. That’s why I stay. That and the fact that I will continue to be a drain on the health care system. Cool. Manage your own care and see who finishes in first.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut

Guess what? Canada has a spy. Really!! Okay, to be fair, he is alleged to have taken part in spying stuff. He hasn’t been convicted yet. So, truthfully we MAY have a spy. Still, I am so proud. Canada, the country that has issues over its millitary role in the world, whose equipment is usually sitting idle due to lack of funds, actually has something that other countries are willing to pay for.

I am not talking about the recipe for a Timmies Cruller, these people want some serious information. Low and behold we had some. Probably it was more like the US and Britain had some and we just knew it because we were in the same room. Nevertheless, we have a spy.

Hey, Maybe we do matter. What’s next? Maybe Peter MacKay is a double 00 operative who needs to be picked up at a salmon lodge because he just off’ed a bad guy who was lurking in the wilderness. He wasn’t in Mexico getting married, he was there taking out some drug cartel kingpin. Yeah, that’s it. And all of this would make Stephen Harper “M”. Who knew? He kinda looks like Judy Dench. Oooh, I have goosebumps.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut

Canada is going through another round of negotiating for health care dollars while never looking at the issues. The Provinces are demanding more money to keep the levels of service they currently don’t provide. The Federal Government is saying that the trough is starting to dry up and they have to put a cap on what they can spend. No one ever meets in the middle and the Canadian populace keeps geeting the dull end of the used needle.

Lets face facts. Money is not the issue. Canadians have piled billions in the system with the promise that things will get better. All of that money has simply been swallowed up in the morass that is the Canadian Health Care system. If money is not the issue than what is? There are many things wrong and they are all structural. Lets take that premise of universal health care or “free” health care as some like to call it. At its roots, the system put forth by Tommy Douglas many years ago recognised the problems we have now. It wasn’t supposed to be “free”. Mr. Douglas realized that people needed to have a buy in to the system and as a result he promoted a co-pay system. The “free” part came in when you suffered catastrophic medical care bills that you could not afford. That is when the system took care of you and did not deny service. A “free” system is always going to suffer abuse. Suffering from a cold or the flu, Canadians could stay at home, rest and drink plenty of fluids. Instead Canadians go to their doctor, where they are told to stay at home, rest and drink plenty of fluids. The doctor may also throw in blood work and a perscription to ease Mr. or Ms. Canuk’s mind. Canadians go to the doctor for things today that a generation ago would have been considered a passing annoyance. Why? Because it doesn’t cost anything and you can where it with pride.

“Where were you? ”

“Oh, I HAD to go to the DOCTOR.”

I once heard a hockey Mom tell her overly dramatic son to “suck it up Princess!” Sounds like a good perscription for Canadians as a whole. Tommy Douglas’ co-pay idea would definitely cut down on abuse of the system.

Family doctors are also to blame. It used to be that your GP was the one who diagnosed and treated your problems. Only the most serious, or confusing issues were referred to a specialist. Now your family doctor is at most times a turnstile that routes you to other areas, tests and specialties. We don’t need to be paying big bucks for that service. A well constructed computer program can do the same thing.

One health care consultant was promoting a funding system that was based on meaningful and measurable outcomes. I am not sure what that means, except to say that I am sure that it entails the hiring of a lot more administrators to develop and measure these meaningful outcomes. The Canadian health care system is administered to death. In fact there is a direct correlation between the rapid increase in health care funding and the increase in administrators. It is a bureaucracy that is now well entrenched and setting the direction of the health care system. As far as patient outcomes, why don’t we give doctors a kick in the butt and tell them to get back on the job. They are the ones that swear an oath to help and protect their patients. Shouldn’t they be the ones that are pushing for meaningful and successful outcomes for their patients, instead of using the excuse that the administrators are the ones holding back resources? Doctors are supposed to be at the top of the heap (they get paid enough), they should be the ones determining what is best for their patients, not administrators. They should be the ones complaining of long wait times and lack of access to services. Yet, they quietly stand aside and let the “system” take all the hard knocks. Straighten up guys and do your job. I still can’t believe that we have patients dying of C. Difficile and contracting Norwalk virus and MRSA in hospitals. That is simply a cleanliness issue, yet you do not hear of physicians, or nurses I might add, putting their foot down and saying they are not going to stand for unclean rooms and facilities for their patients.

A generation ago, you walked into a hospital and there were rooms with beds in them with patients being treated. Now those rooms have been converted to offices and meeting rooms and are filled with catered lunch trays for the latest get together to discuss an issue that should have been acted on eight months ago. That lack of accountability is staggering. Huge wastes of money occurr and yet no one is responsible since it was all decided at “committee”. Committees are the ones who spend millions of dollars on studies, when they could get a better answer from polling the workers doing the job. Most health districts spend money on marketing and promotion. Yup, markeing a service that you have to use. Why? I guess it is to make us feel good that they are doing something with all those billions. I think they should cut out the billboards and give someone a hip sooner.

The system as it stands is broken. Yet, there is still this belief that Canadians need to throw more money at it. Its like pouring water into a broken glass and wondering why you are always thirsty. Canada needs to do a major overhaul of its system. The simplest is to ditch what exists and put the running of hospitals out to tender. The government would still be the single payer, and the hospitals would have to make a business case for survival. If they couldn’t then they would be replaced by an organization that could.

None of this will take place, because Canadians are too chicken to mess with their much ballyhooed “Universal Health Care System”. Well the system is a mess and when Canadians get to the point where they really need it, the realization that it is not all they thought it would be will be too late.

Until then I remain,

A Sour Kraut

Speaking of stupidity, the award goes to the German people and its government. Those straight and logical thinking Germans made one of the stupidest decisions ever. In the wake of the Japanese tsunami, and the hysteria around the damage to the Fukushima Nuclear Plant, Germany decided that they were going to shut down all of their nuclear power generators. ALL OF THEM! In the name of safety. Yes, safety.

Let’s fast forward nine months. All of the damaged reactors have been shut down and are just sitting there waiting to be removed and broken into their respective pieces and decommissioned. No real drama there. While this will be a messy and time consuming process, there will be no threat to safety. No more that cleaning up the chemical mess at Love Canal or the Sydney Tar Ponds or any of the dozens or so coal mine disasters every year. You know the ones. The explosions and cave- ins that kill hundreds (maybe even thousands if China every came clean) EVERY YEAR!!! Meanwhile, not one person died as a result of the damage at Fukushima. NOT ONE!!! And the residents that were moved because of radiation levels are starting to be able to move back. The predicted long term negatives are few and minor. Hmmmm…

Yet Germany jumped on the hysteria band wagon, with all the forethought of my twelve year old. Their passion for safety and the environment overcame the reasonable question of “How are we going to produce all this electricity that the nuclear plants are producing?” It’s simple. As we found out recently Germany has dramatically increased its imports of that paragon of safety and environmental friendliness – COAL. Yup, coal. Miners everywhere have rejoiced. Their wives and families not so much.

And don’t even start with the green energy arguments. Germany and the rest of Europe, being at the leading edge of windpower have already learned it is not the answer. There are three answers to power generation – nuclear, coal and hydro-electric. Currently, solar, wind and tidal are small add ons at best. Germany had the answer, nuclear, and they flipped the switch. Brilliant.

Until then, I remain,
A Sour Kraut.

I hate to be proven right. Especially when it is a result of stupidity and a waste of hard earned taxpayer’s money. Yet once again here we are. Check back a year or so, when Ringo triumphantly stated that he and the NDP government in Nova Scotia were moving the Province into the 21st century and the new “Green Economy”. Still makes me nauseated.

This whole “green economy” thing smells as much as the whole dot.com fiasco and that “new economy”. What new economy? You still have to produce something that people want and that is tangible and can be exported. Whether it is a service, a computer program or a piece of lumber. There is no free ride. If it is does not have a competitive advantage, no one will want it. Keeping that in mind, Ringo and the people at NSBI thought it a good idea to lure the Korean giant Daewoo to New Glasgow. The idea was that Daewoo would take over the defunct Trenton works and start manufacturing wind turbine parts. Specifically, the towers that support the turbine pods and the blades. Not exactly rocket science here, but what the heck, this is the new Green Economy. Now, Daewoo could have gone anywhere in the world to do this. Maybe even Korea. Knowing that they would have to sweeten the pot to get a global giant like Daewoo to touch the shores of Nova Scotia, they sweetened the pot to the tune of $70 million dollars. Really. A company with sales in the range of tens of billions gets $70 million of Nova Scotian’s hard earned dollars. Uh huh.

Now let us give governments the benefit of the doubt and admit that in some cases, spending money to lure companies to their jurisdictions can be a good thing. A good thing if you do your home work. Pick a company that is going to stay. Pick a company that will have to invest their technological know-how in the province and as a result will be slower to take the risk and leave. Pick a company that doesn’t have 200 hundred other location options. As I said above, building wind towers is not a technologically advanced endeavour. Any engineer worth his salt can design one and set up a production model. So how do you get a competitive advantage? Cost. So is Nova Scotia a low cost producer? Maybe, but if they had done their homework they would have found out that the biggest consumer of wind generators is China. AND guess what? China is also the biggest manufacturer of wind generators and their components. Me thinks that a Nova Scotian plant does not stand a chance at being cheaper than a Chinese plant.

Consequently, we heard the announcement last week that the Trenton plant was laying off workers as a result of a lack of orders for their towers. Told ya so. Although I didn’t predict it would take less than a year. Wait a minute though. They did say that they were hoping to rehire the work force and lots more once they received orders for the turbine blades. Yes, this is what they said. Really. If no one is purchasing your towers to place the turbines on, then the natural conclusion is they do not need any blades either. I don’t know, maybe blades wear out. Maybe there is a chance to get in there and sell blades on a replacement program. Maybe. Make sure you tell the Chinese the meeting is at a different hotel.

Don’t even get me started on Ringo’s other gaffs. The $70 mill to Daewoo, the $25 mill to Abitibi-Bowater, the $10 mill to Irving and the list goes on. That kind of money could have been used to provide a “free of charge” ferry link to New England. Think about the economic benefits of that!!!!

We crave leadership and imagination. We get waste and stupidity. I hope someday it changes.

Until then, I remain,
A Sour Kraut