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Octavius Hite
Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Location: Househunting, looking for a new bunker from which to convert the world to homosexuality.
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 Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:32 pm Post subject: Sarkozy looks to Canada for economic ideas |
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Read on:
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=2bb600b7-20d4-49fb-8b73-adfb0decbbd1
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PARIS - Canada's � la mode reputation here isn't limited to its francophone heritage, vast geography, exotic aboriginal cultures, soaring energy wealth and multiculturalism -- perceived blessings that are often featured in the fawning French media.
Canada is also politically fashionable, as indicated in policies announced this week by President Nicolas Sarkozy to reinvigorate a struggling French economy weighed down by one of the world's most bloated bureaucracies.
France's new president didn't mention Canada by name as he used powerful words to describe the challenge his country faces.
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"What I am proposing is a cultural revolution, a revolution for changing the way we think, for changing behaviour," he told a gathering of civil servants in one of two major policy speeches.
But Mr. Sarkozy is deliberately mimicking Canada's mid-1990s austerity drive, according to the French media.
Among Mr. Sarkozy's announcements was a plan to offer bureaucrats financial incentives to leave government, "a measure inspired by Liberal policies in Canada between 1993-1997," declared a headline in the daily newspaper Lib�ration.
The president is close friends with Canadian billionaire businessman Paul Desmarais, whose son is married to the daughter of former prime minister Jean Chr�tien, in power during the years in question.
Mr. Sarkozy's top advisers have frequently consulted Jocelyne Bourgon, the former Canadian ambassador to the Paris-based Organization for Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Ms. Bourgon was Mr. Chr�tien's top bureaucrat during the 1990s when military bases were boarded up, government programs eliminated and more than 60,000 public service jobs slashed.
"Sarkozy does not have very strong international knowledge and he doesn't speak English very well," said Jean-Michel Demetz, deputy chief editor of the weekly newsmagazine l'Express.
"But he has a very clear knowledge of what happened in Canada because of his contacts. He has been very interested in the Canadian experience and by the way it happened softly." While some French right-wingers wanted Mr. Sarkozy to emulate Britain's Margaret Thatcher, who took on and broke big unions after taking power in 1979, Mr. Sarkozy is seeking ways to avoid the dramatic confrontations with France's militant labour groups that brought his predecessors to their knees.
Mr. Sarkozy, a brilliant communications strategist, is also aware of France's deep anti-Americanism and hostility toward any hint at a move towards the survival-of-the-fittest U.S. economic model.
"Canada of course has a good image because it appears as a mix of the best of two worlds -- North American dynamism and capitalism, and the kind of modern European social model," said Mr. Demetz, whose magazine produced a cover story last year headlined: "Canada: The country of France's dreams." Canadian historian Timothy Smith, in his 2004 book France in Crisis, estimated that more than half the French population -- including pensioners and the jobless -- depend on government cheques.
A favourite target is SNCF, the heavily-subsidized, state-owned railway company where workers can retire as young as 50, can take their families on numerous free rail trips throughout Europe each year, and have access to dirt-cheap vacations in the French Alps in chalets owned by their labour councils.
Mr. Sarkozy has vowed to gradually increase the retirement age of "special" pension recipients, putting them up to the age-60 national standard which is still a half-decade lower than that of France's major competitors.
He has also announced that France will only replace a third of retiring bureaucrats in 2008, rising to one-half in 2009 and subsequent years.
Skeptics point out that Mr. Sarkozy, as head of a unitary state, can't copy Mr. Chr�tien's tactic of cutting billions in social transfers to the provinces.
And France isn't facing the same catastrophic deficit "wall" as Canada in 1993 that ultimately galvanized Canadian public opinion.
Canada's total federal and provincial deficit of $63 billion in 1993 represented almost nine per cent of the economy's gross domestic product, OECD economist Annabella Mourougana said yesterday.
France's projected 2007 deficit of about $60 billion Cdn, for a population twice Canada's size, is about 2.3 per cent of its GDP.
Peter O'Neil is CanWest's Europe correspondent. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:35 pm Post subject: |
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ROFL, Octavius. The only thing more predictable than Canadians condemning America is Canadians praising Canada.
I guess that is Canada's peculiar nationalism, though, is it not? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:45 pm Post subject: |
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So Sarkozy is *considering* some economic reform related to Canada.
*Yawn*
Update us if something actually happens, okay, Octavius? |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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The relations between France & Canada are deeply profound.
D'accord? |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:16 pm Post subject: |
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Igotthisguitar observed:
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| The relations between France & Canada are deeply profound. |
Uh, I see. You mean as opposed to "slightly profound?" 
Quebec as an economic model? Methinks not, French type.
Don't count your won and francs waiting for the French to adopt Canada's laisse-faire attitude toward marriage, either, OH.
Well, at least the French are getting some spine against Iran. More than we can say for the Canadians. |
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blaseblasphemener
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Location: There's a voice, keeps on calling me, down the road, that's where I'll always be
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:48 pm Post subject: |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Igotthisguitar observed:
| Quote: |
| The relations between France & Canada are deeply profound. |
Uh, I see. You mean as opposed to "slightly profound?"
Quebec as an economic model? Methinks not, French type.
Don't count your won and francs waiting for the French to adopt Canada's laisse-faire attitude toward marriage, either, OH.
Well, at least the French are getting some spine against Iran. More than we can say for the Canadians. |
Elaborate, please.  |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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| blaseblasphemener wrote: |
Well, at least the French are getting some spine against Iran.
More than "WE" can say for the Canadians. |
cowardly war monger rhetoric. |
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Ilsanman
Joined: 15 Aug 2003
Location: Bucheon, Korea
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 6:25 am Post subject: |
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I don't see you signing your name up to join the armed forces, you lonely old fart.
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
Igotthisguitar observed:
| Quote: |
| The relations between France & Canada are deeply profound. |
Uh, I see. You mean as opposed to "slightly profound?"
Quebec as an economic model? Methinks not, French type.
Don't count your won and francs waiting for the French to adopt Canada's laisse-faire attitude toward marriage, either, OH.
Well, at least the French are getting some spine against Iran. More than we can say for the Canadians. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 6:42 am Post subject: |
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| Perhaps it means the French are going to look around for a big rich nearby country (Russia, mayhap?) and suck off their nipple for a while. |
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Zutronius
Joined: 16 Apr 2007
Location: Suncheon
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:17 am Post subject: |
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| Canada isn't exactly the place to find new ideas. I've heard Iceland had done lots to improve their country, why not look to them? Canada isn't too much better than the US in some regards. Our health care (for now) is still alright, but not much else looks too promising. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 4:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
ROFL, Octavius. The only thing more predictable than Canadians condemning America is Canadians praising Canada.
I guess that is Canada's peculiar nationalism, though, is it not? |
That aside, Canada has transformed itself from a major welfare state with huge deficits to an energy super power with budget surpluses that still manages provide universal health care. It's avoided the economic downturn suffered by the USA in 2001, its currency is on par with the USA, it's an energy exporter... I dunno. I don't really see much wrong with what Canada is doing these days. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| I don't really see much wrong with what Canada is doing these days. |
Canada continues to fail to meet Kyoto Standards
I don't know whether that is necessarily a failure given that Canada's economy is improving. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 5:23 pm Post subject: |
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While it's nice to find yourself sitting on a gold mine, I don't think it is a sign of virtue or merit. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
While it's nice to find yourself sitting on a gold mine, I don't think it is a sign of virtue or merit. |
Yes, actually. Both Norway and Nigeria sit on a gold mine of oil. No? One can go the way of Norway or one can go the way of Nigeria. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 6:10 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| That aside, Canada has... |
Considered sending this via pm but changed my mind.
Had this come from anyone but you, On the Other Hand, Urban Myth, or a tiny handful of other Canadian posters, including my friend Octavius, I would not clarify this.
I take no issue with Canadian politics per se. Like America, Canadian society features pros and cons. There is much to admire in Canada. My only issue is with Canada's peculiar, flag-bearing, chest-thumping nationalism and its near pathological need to define itself by the despised American Other. In a word: Canadian-style antiAmericanism.
We see examples of what I refer to here daily, if not hourly, here on this board. So I imagine you know exactly what I refer to and can judge some of my responses here accordingly.
Hopefully I speak for several other Americans here: the instant these Canadians drop their harsh stereotypes and start simply talking about specifics -- with the easy, propaganda-serving generalizations -- they might just find that almost anything is open to discussion and can indeed be discussed profitably.
Last edited by Gopher on Mon Sep 24, 2007 6:51 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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