That facility, it said, would be able to supply 500,000 electric vehicles annually.
That is a lot of batteries.
It is actually probably a GOOD thing this was not done ten years ago. Back then, it would have been bought out by an American firm in short order. Now, there is little stomach for selling out to the Americans. Today, this has a really good chance of remaining Canadian,
Michael Kovrig, when he was arrested by the Chinese, was working for all intenents and purposes under the auspices of the American State Department, for American (not Canadian) interests. One might suggest that he had sold out to America. I suggest that he was more American than Canadian in his ‘politics’. It still seems that he is spouting American State Department propaganda when it comes to his comments on Canada’s relationship with China.
Canada needs a foreign policy stance that reflects Canada’s interests, not the American State Department.
Jails are expensive. A new one with 375 beds under construction in Thunder Bay, Ont., comes with a price tag of $1.2 billion.
That’s $3,200,000 per inmate.
Maybe we SHOULD build hotels for low-risk inmates instead of these prison cells. A 40 story hotel. How are they going to escape from the 20th floor? That is a very long knotted bed sheet rope. Link 4 together, as a horizontal evacuation route, in case of fire or such. No need to evacuate down to ground level.
I am permanently for defending the truth. I can quote very similar examples of American firms operating in Africa and subjecting the workers to similar or worse, and that is in their own country. There have been convictions in Canada where farm labor using immigrants has been subjected to similar conditions. Labor investigators have found similar situations in the construction industry in Canada using immigrant labor fro Eastern European countries. The American news is constantly describing similar conditions among undocumented laborers. Is that ‘forced labor’ or ‘abused labor’ or just plain ‘taking advantage of the disadvantaged’? Without unions, such conditions, even though illegal, would be a lot more common in Canada and America. In Brazil, there are currently 169 other companies in the same blacklist. Bear in mind, the abuses at this construction site, if it in fact they actually happened, were done right under the watch of the Brazilian government. And there is no reliable evidence that this activity, if it actually occurred, was sanctioned by the executives of the company itself, in China. Once BYD was informed of the conditions, it severed its relation with the contractor. And how about all of those American apparel firms that contracted production to firms in Pakistan and Bangladesh that used far worse labor conditions - none of them were ‘locked out’ of the American market.
There is a strong faction within China that has definitely strongly right wing. China is a ‘no party’ system, where factions of all positions form the ruling government. This is very evident in the ruling bodies of many of the provinces, where many ‘Communist party’ governance bodies are very right-wing in many aspects. But overall, the general push in China is to more leisure time and a better work-life balance in the major high wealth cities. Forced labor does not make sense in a country with more workers than jobs available.
But please, explain exactly what your notion is of ‘forced labor’ in China? How is it different from, say, the labor practices of the ‘right to work’ States like Alabama, where the wages in a lot of workplaces are basically poverty-level, there is no State limit on hours worked or State minimum wage, and you have to work to survive? I really do not believe that those shouting ‘forced labor’ really have any concept of what it is, and generally apply the term as a general ‘talking point’ against the opposition. ‘Forced labor’ and ‘poor working conditions’ are not the same. Unions think ALL non-union non-management jobs are ‘forced labor’, because the worker has no say in the working conditions.
In Alabama, if there were no federal labor law, there would be no law at all. https://labor.alabama.gov/Wage_and_Hour_Info.pdf
What about countries where, if you do not work, you do not live unless you either beg, or are a criminal, or you are in a family that can support you (i.e., without a job you are impoverished without a social safety net and starve to death)? Is that ‘forced labor’? Like the typical right-wing talking point “You lazy indigent, either work or starve”? If you are paid, is it ‘forced labor’? Otherwise, it is just ‘slavery’, not ‘forced labor’.
The name says it all - Disinformation.
At least they warn you in their name that what you are about to read is complete disinformation.
Imagine that - a news media who’s purpose is to counter facts with disinformation.
Same arguments can be used to counter the anti-Chinese inflammatory comments being used to deny China-Canada trade.
The really interesting part of this is what was NOT said.
The Chinese EV’s coming over to Canada are arguably far superior to anything made by an American company, so they can not argue against these vehicles based on merit and quality, they have to use inflammatory anti-Chinese rhetoric to argue they should not be brought over.
When China bought controlling interest in Ford International (it was the money from this sale that kept Ford America solvent) er, and Tesla built his mega-plant in China, the detailed knowledge behind the patents on these EV’s went with them. In the case of Ford, the actual patent rights came with the sale. The Chinese improved on this knowledge. The irony is that now. when the Chinese vehicles come to Canada, the knowledge behind the patents also comes with them.
Probably the same as any Canadian politician who patched over to anther party. But at least Ma admitted he was playing a political angle, a political game, albeit a Conservative tactic.
Hmmmmm, maybe not so sure on that. Blue is the color of the PC party, Red is the Liberal color Of COURSE the world filter would be blue.
McCuaig-Johnston was a former assistant deputy minister, and as such had the political acumen to defend herself. She was definitely NOT a neutral unbiased independent witness. It is obvious she is vehemently anti-Chinese. She had a political agenda, and Ma had a duty to disrupt it. Ma was certainly not parroting lines from Beijing. In fact, I posit that given Ma’s background, that would be the very last thing he would consider doing - If he is older than 42, he was born in Hong Kong and emigrated to Canada when it was still under British rule. Ma’s question made it very clear he was talking about Shenzhen, and it was her that twisted, distorted, and obfuscated the dialogue to the Uighur, instead of answering questions about the topic being discussed - the manufacture of EV’s in Shenzhen China. The right wing is just sour grapes, still smarting from Ma’s patch-over from the PC to Liberal.
No,he is acting for the committee he s on. Given his birth background and subsequent emigration, I doubt if he has any loyalty to the Chinese government.
And then there is Cuba. Conundrum after conundrum. Oh for the good old days when you could tell the bad guys from the good without a playlist.
Wait, in the ‘good old days’, there was Vietnam.
The Conservatives are very upset that he switched parties, that is obvious. One would wonder what their reaction would be if he were still a conservative.
Politics is politics. To understand the questioning, it must be understood that this witness was NOT selected as an unbiased witness, but was selected specifically BECAUSE of her bias towards the issue, and towards China. She was an assistant deputy minister, which basically means an unelected politician specifically indoctrinated in the policies of the political party in power at the time. Her position was well understood long before she took the stand. There was no hope of getting any unbiased neutral ‘facts’ from her from the get-go.
Unfortunately, I see this tactic used by the PC members quite frequently, so I can accept that it is a tactic that party promotes in their members. It is, unfortunately, extremely common in the House of our neighbors to the south of us.
I sympathize with you. There does not seem to be a vehicle for good communication between the two mods for this community, and looking at the mod logs (in red, very bottom of right hand column) it does not appear that the mods do any dialogue with posters before banning them or deleting their posts. Theoretically, if one of the mods has a particular bias, there is no way to address that bias in their mod actions. Should their communication with you be in a DM, or should it be in a public forum?
His office freely admitted that he was using a tactic he learned while he was a member of the PC party. So was the ‘idiocy’ from the PC or the Liberal Party?
The difference between social policy and fiscal policy. They are not the same kettle.