Ontario lawl... I spent way too much time there over the last year.
I'll just leave this here...
With twice the debt of California, Ontario is now the world?s most indebted sub-sovereign borrower | Financial Post
With regards to exporting refined products you have two problems:
1. Additional logistics and costs associated with moving a number of refined products vs crude which will later be refined into these products.
2. Which party would be interested in constructing more refineries in Canada? (And where would they be located, are you saying you would be supporting a refinery in Kitimat?) The cons would be the only ones quick to say yes to a new refinery, the libs,NDP, and most certainly the greens would just kill it with red tape.
Clean energy is a misnomer, while over the long term we can certainly consider hydro and wind power less damaging in terms of emissions, there are other environmental issues associated with these energies. I think the more appropriate way of saying it is that more and more companies and countries are capitalizing on the diversity afforded by alternative energy sources.
With regards to child care take a look at they programs the have in Quebec and what the costs have been like to the federal and provincial gov. in terms of child tax credits and day care reduced contribution programs. Quebec has long been the leader in terms of these sort of "incentives" and their economy is 100% shit. Obviously there are other cultural and corruption issues that contribute to Quebec being an economic nightmare... but you get the idea. BTW Quebec has insanely high personal, corp, and sales taxes.
GTA traffic makes me want to kill myself, the real lesson to be learned there is actually in the housing market - if we don't facilitate a housing bubble where everyone and their cousin needs a house in the burbs we wouldn't have the transportation burdens we have today. What's fair, more tax on the people that use this infrastructure aka higher taxes on gasoline. Live near where you work like a reasonable person and the problem goes away. I know this is simplistic, but I'm sure you can appreciated the perspective to some extent. (IE: Those who live in abby and commute to DT Van
)
Yes i would prefer a healthy work force, but I doubt it's the work force that burdens the health care system - it's old people slowly dying.. and there are a lot of them set to die in the next 30 years compared to the number of tax payers.
Having said all that, there is nothing wrong with your position or thoughts on the issues. I just have very little faith that any of the left leaning parties will successfully execute. To facilitate these programs costs money, people need to administer them, and next thing you know you are paying more taxes for the program and people who make it functional. Only after many years will we know if the programs were worth the money, at which point someone gets tasked with cutting this piece of the Gov. off.. which will be an election issue in something like 2041 etc.
Economic outlook for Canada is not good IMO, I think we're going to have a very nasty 20 year patch while the boomers die off and our economy diversifies. It's not the Gov. that's going to fix it, it's up to the people to push their kids into the right sectors, to ditch their jobs as EIT's at pipeline companies and go do something innovative as opposed to worrying about how many ppm of magnesium made it into the last batch of crude etc. Right now there are too many smart people being sucked into finance, construction, and resource development - need to convince these people technology is where it's at.. but the pay does not seem to compare, so what can you do?