QUOTES of the EVENING from recent Wednesday Nights

From #1240 7 Dec

• The difference between me and him (Henry Kissinger) is that when people talk, I listen
• The campaign seems to be: we are buying your votes with your money. It is the wrong approach
• The main problem is that it [the Gomery Commission] created the impression that there is a pious and non-pious side of politics
• Canadians have become lazy and slothful and dependent on the government for everything in their lives
• It will be very hard to vote considering the choices
• One problem is that the persons from among whom we have to choose are all disappointing
• Income tax cuts encourage people to earn more. G.S.T. cuts encourage people to spend more
• I think that the disaffection of the electorate is affecting civility For everybody who is totally disillusioned, there is the option of voting Green
• I would like to see an extremely weak Conservative government in office just long enough to crack open some of the sacred cows
• Paul Martin’s reputation in public finance was unassailable. What happened to his popularity? Should he have given it (the inquiry into the sponsorship scandal) to the RCMP instead of (to) Gomery? The sponsorship (issue) was not his, maybe, but it has dogged him throughout his career. We do not really know him as a Prime Minister
• Canada lacks ambition [according to the Economist feature on Canada]
• If you are laying off all these people, who is going to buy your product?
• My view is (that) G.M. is reactivating itself as a company in China
• Manufacturing is the lowest form of business. Where you make the money is in inventing, selling and marketing the idea
• I am suggesting that many of the polls will prove to be out of whack
• All polls do is to track trends
• Historically, when interest rates go up, gold goes the other way; as oil prices go up, the same thing is happening in the price of gold
• Gold has been lagging for some time and is now catching up
• If everyone implemented Kyoto, it would buy us ten years at most. Three volcanos, or ironization [the reaction between the salt water and iron that affects the temperature of the oceans] of the oceans would buy us more
• Kyoto is nothing but a ploy. All that Kyoto does is to get affluent countries to buy emission credits
• The other fascinating purpose of Kyoto is to monetize the value of the exchange credit

  From #1239 30 Nov

• “Liberals will win again because Harper just doesn’t have it, unless he promises to lower the G.S.T., in which case he could win. People just don’t like him.”
• “Kabul is a poor Iraq.”
• “The coalition was based on the principle that Merkel could have the top job as long as she didn’t do anything.”
• “In twenty years, China will dominate car manufacturing. They will be where Korean manufacturers are now.”
• “There is nobody on the right … If they stayed just to the right of the Liberals they could have been a majority.”
• “Medicare will survive but, whoever wins, privatization is coming.”

  From #123823 Nov

• Most politicians have no concept of what their real relationship is with the media – it's a love/hate relationship and never based on friendship
• Boisclair is young and intelligent but will not suevive (politically) for one and a half years … He will be succeeded by Gilles Duceppe who will come to power without a convention. If not, Bernard Landry will be happy to come back. Boisclair is vulnerable
• Maybe we are offering a set of values that young Quebecers do not share. Our standards are the standards of twenty years ago or more
• Although it is easier to raise $30 million than $2 million for a new project, it doesn't make sense because at $30 million I can't give the good return on equity that I can on $2 million

  From #1237 16 Nov

• In the United States, companies have a real voice and in point of fact, corporate resources are used by legislative bodies to perform badly-needed research
• As a low-key engineering construction firm, we are probably Canada's best-kept secret
• What is being said increasingly worldwide is that government and business need to work together and they need to do things together, they each have a role to play. Public/private partnership is not yet big in Canada, but is happening elsewhere
• Create 'Cinderella' diseases that everyone focuses on and funds

  From #1236 9 Nov.

• It’s a political and economic problem and the natives have to look after it themselves. The alcoholism and other problems are the reflection of changes in social mores - not just limitations on land or hunting & fishing rights -- and can’t be solved by throwing money at them. They have to find how to live in a changing world
• If everyone just told the truth, we could get rid of 80% of law enforcement
• There are time when you have to suspend rights and freedoms in order to preserve rights and freedoms – that's the paradox
• Terror is a tool for power
• The next step in loss of liberty will come in panic …possibly from such a thing as avian influenza… (We) act very quickly and radically in a state of fear and panic
• Canada is a great country but there are a lot of ways in which we are slipping. People who haven’t been to other parts of the world can’t see the flaws. Gomery was well worth the money but I’m very disappointed by the reaction of our former Prime Minister
• We have an amazing opportunity to attract amazing research people who have been turned away from the United States because of their background. We could take on the world!
• The role of a Prime Minister is to inspire the nation. … Inspiration (came) from Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Stephen Lewis and yes, from Bill Clinton

  From #1235 2 Nov.

• Canada needs a new political policy that represents coast to coast thinking. Canada is not radical. It’s not that people are stupid; they are tired
• No-one has the right to ban any citizen from running for the leadership of a party – if you lose, you lose ….
• They [the people] march in America – they don't march in Canada
• Every political system can be compromised
• Québec would do well as a separate country
• As page ', LEFT);" onmouseout="return nd();" target="_new" class=t2> India becomes a strategic alliance with us, the coverage is going to change as it becomes a more serious player in the world
• India will be a great super power in the next thirty years … fabulous technical people and they speak English
• India … tremendous and innovative workforce … China is far behind
• It [television] has always been a vehicle for upward mobility

  From #1234 26 Oct

• The Canadian position on this is that the NAFTA panel is binding (no negotiation). … – Canada gave away quite a bit in order to get a binding deal and to have the U.S. not acknowledge the binding aspect is a blow to Canadian negotiators
• One of the major problems with the U.S. is that it considers all treaties optional rather than binding- this is a major governance issue
• Of the top ten (best) selling drugs in the world, not one would be a vaccine
• Imagine the outrage if the Canadian government (were to go) into the vaccine business and had selected the wrong strain

  From #1233 19 Oct

• You can’t get the province to go forward with just private education… We do have to invest in public education
• Negotiation is on the basis of pay increases rather than competition with the private sector. Unions are more interested in salaries than promotion of the individual
• We have the concept of not damaging self-esteem. … Their self-esteem is probably going to be damaged in the rest of their lives, so let them get used to it
• We have a generation of students with computer technology (which) the teaching process has not matched. Why is it that schools are not enhancing the teaching process? Maybe we should be looking at that?

  From #1232 12 Oct

• Trying to make the virtual world more real and the real world more virtual
• Many great inventions started as gimmicks
• The rest of the world has the mirror-image problem of the U.S. problem; the rest of the world has six billion people and the U.S. has 250 million, but the U.S. has ¼ of the world economy and the rest of the world has ¾ of the economy

  From #1232 12 Oct

• Trying to make the virtual world more real and the real world more virtual
• Many great inventions started as gimmicks
• The rest of the world has the mirror-image problem of the U.S. problem; the rest of the world has six billion people and the U.S. has 250 million, but the U.S. has ¼ of the world economy and the rest of the world has ¾ of the economy

  From #1231 5 Oct

• It is true that the German people felt they made a great sacrifice, Deutschmark for Euro, but if it had not happened, there would have been two or three crises and tremendously costly intervention by the Germans in Italy and France. The only role of the European Central Bank (unlike Canada) is to keep inflation in check
• If you think of (Europe as) a unified country, Turkey becomes a problem - on the surface, Turkey is secular, but under the surface, it appears that it could go one way or another. We might be integrating people who may not want to become Europeans (Trojan Horse)
• People who are comfortable with disparities in their own societies ("the price of freedom") are comfortable with disparities in other societies, while those who are uncomfortable with disparities at home, will be equally concerned about conditions in other societies
• The only proven system (for funds from donor countries)is money that flows directly to NGOs
• One of the most effective ways of alleviating poverty in Third World countries is through microcredit – miniscule (by our standards) amounts of money, a very high rate of repayment and a large percentage of the recipients are women
  This is the International Year of Microcredit

  From #1229

• “This is not an act of God. It was a non-act of Man. It has been clear that the levees had deteriorated.”
• "The unions are keeping technology out of the classroom.”

  From #1228

• Air safety is an incredibly highly integrated and very complex system; the greatest problem lies not in creating norms and standards, but in implementation of those standards
• CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) is the biggest category of air accidents over the last 50 years – last year (2004) was the first year since 1945 that there was not one CFIT incident
• One of the principal dividers between developed and developing countries is the capacity to absorb and use and install technology, but if we deny developing countries the opportun