Louis Ohland wrote:

Not being sarcastic, but I was unaware that Canada has much industrial
capacity for turning out manufactured goods. I know Canada exports
wheat, timber, Red Green Show, and bad beer.

Open my eyes to decent Canadian tool makers.

On a related note, I cannot see why it is impossible for continental
american machinery manufacturers to compete with the pac rim
manufacturers, except for the unfortunate existence of punitive government.

Brent wrote:

the only think i waish is that they had a few more "flags" If i cant
buy Canadian or American i'd LIKE to buy tools for the G7 if possible
before i buy a chinese tool. I am the type o person who WILL pay a
premium for "made in canada" but admittedly there IS a limit, i wont
pay double for the same thing to the same fit and finish


Standard Modern lathes is about what's left, if you mean machine tools.

Nothing special, but still able to survive.

Our industrial capacity is being run down and outsourced by graduates
of the same fine business schools that are responsible for a lot of the
US's business going offshore. We have a smaller population to absorb the
losses. shrug

I'd lay a good bet that there is a lot of stuff that is local to you,
or relatively so, that you are unaware of. That you are not seeing the
stuff from up here, is by no means an indicator that it does not exist.

I was a spectator at the manufacturing tech. show at Toronto last
year. Not huge, but I was there for 8 hours, and felt I could easilly
have spent two more days there in order to see most of the displays and
get a reasonable feel for what was of interest
http://www.cmts.ca/floorplan.asp

There was a similar, though smaller show in Edmonton AB this year.

I met a gentleman from an outfit outside of Calgary that is grinding
several tons a year of custon carbide endmills and reamers for
industrial use. He is one example of many entrepaneurial types that I
met that are running large dollar shops, pretty much under the radar.
From his client list, I would find it tough to think that at some
point, you have not handled some product that was downstream of some of
his cutters.

Bad beer??? You prefer yours without either flavor or alcohol content?

You loss. More for us!! :-)

I will admit that some of the smaller US breweries product has been
pretty good, but the mass market swill is...swill. I can say about the
same for our mass market stuff, too, if I want to be truthful about it,
but I'll take our swill over yours! :-P



Cheers
Trevor Jones