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2000-08-05 || 2.28p Water water everywhere... Article in the Globe and Mail to-day saying how the growing water shortage will probably result in Canada being a water power (in the same way that Saudi Arabia is an oil power) in about twenty-five years. dissapearing supplies of drinking water in europe, the US, and elsewhere will result in people increasingly looking to Canada for their water supply due to really lousy water usage. Now, what that article didn't mention is that, unlike Suadi Arabia, we tend to sell anything money-making to the first US company to come along (A perfect example was when then-prime minister Diefenbaker cancelled the Avro Arrow and essentially opened the door for all those fine Canuck brains to go south and design NASA's space shuttle). The same will happen with the water springs, I'm pretty sure. Yet another opportunity to make this country truly prosperous down the drain, as it were. It'll happen. Hey, it happened to the mining industry here, it's happening to the forestry industry, s why not, right? So why not pass a few laws? Say, no Canadian springwater company can be more than 30% foreign owned? People would call that 'protectionism,' and all sorts of other nasty names, but look at what happened a few years ago, when it came out that Hollywood lost 10.3 billion fine US dollars becuase producers were filming in Canada and Australia? California started talking about passing laws. British yacht makers complain all the time about the French government backing their own shipyards. The result of this is that the french make some of the finest damned vessels I've ever seen. I don't really know if protectionism is fair or not. I know that it would be very hard for Canadian industry to survive next to the American behemoth without it, and I think that that's a bit more important. I also happen to think that we need the American behemoth as a target for which to strive, rather han a scary monster before which to cringe. The US makes some very cool stuff. Apples, for instance (the computers, not the fruit). SGIs. Suns. Rockets. Blenders. Gibson guitars. The great (and recently bankrupt) Singer sewing machine company. The list goes on. But there is a very simple, unassailable fact that makes it had for Canadian industry to compete: 32 million of us, 280 million or so of them. You do the math. |
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shite One last little note... - 09.21.2006 de-stressing, biking and terrorism - 06.06.2006 Mildly stressed... - 05.29.2006 More crime stupidity - 05.28.2006 Scary stuff - 05.25.2006
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