There are a few bright, burning issues of contention that exist between the good neighbours in North America. Hopefully these will get resolved amicably during GW Bush's second term: 1. Lumber tariffs -- though the Canadian stumpage rules do need reform, the tariff regime imposed by the US is way out of line since they can't even prove to their own FTC that anyone has been substantively harmed. This has been going on for over a decade now (almost two) and every multinational dispute pan...

Like many are speculating, I believe Colin Powell will resign in favour of Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State. And, as everybody is predicting, Rehnquist will resign to start the process of moving in a new bunch of Supremes.

The temperature on the Canada-US softwood lumber dispute has just been dialed up again by an old adversary of the Canadian lumber industry: Senator Max Baucus (D-Mon) who introduced the original legislation to double the tariffs. Currently, Canadian lumber companies exporting to the US have paid C$3.6 billion of tariffs into an escrow account -- the status of the funds awaiting final ruling on both the legality and amount collected. However, the new Baucus bill could seek to distribute the es...

All this talk about what "fair" level of personal income tax to levy seems premature to me without resolving two key issues on the transfer of wealth: 1. Inheritance/estate taxes -- how does wealth move intergenerationally. 2. Business taxes -- how much are corporate and organizational entities fiscally responsible to the employees, shareholdres, local, provincial/state and federal levels of government/society. Any tax system for individuals can easily be skewed or frustrated by the sy...