Urban America has been redlined. Government has not offered tax incentives for investment as it has in a dozen foreign markets. Banks have redlined it. Industries have moved out they've redlined it. Clearly to break up the redlining process there must be incentives to green-line with hedges against risk.

I forget what the relevant American rate is but I can tell you that our goal is to have a combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate of no more than 25 percent. We're on target to do that by 2012. We will have significantly - by a significant margin the lowest corporate tax rates in the G-7 and that's our - our government's objective.

I think the American government is now the most corrupt government in the world.

In any crass political calculation drilling for oil will always win more votes than putting a price on carbon. But if I recall what I was taught in fifth-grade American government class we elect presidents to do more than crass political calculations.

History tells us that America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial and the government is attentive and engaged. Who among us really would looking back wish to edit out either sphere at the entire expense of the other?

The fact is that America has been at her most prosperous when government and the private sector have been not at war but in a wary if often underplayed alliance. History is unmistakable on this point.

What the Founding Fathers created in the Constitution is the most magnificent government on the face of the Earth and the reason is this: because it was intended to preserve the American society and the American spirit not to transform it or destroy it.

President Bush once said that marriage is a sacred institution and should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman. If this is the case - and most Americans would agree with him on this - then I have to ask: Why is the government at all involved in marrying people?

One side of the American psyche wants smaller government lower taxes and more choices for individuals even if those choices increase risk. The other wants a strong social safety net to protect the weakest among us even if it costs more to minimize risk.

People know something has gone terribly wrong with our government and it has gotten so far off track. But people also know that there is nothing wrong in America that a good old-fashioned election can't fix.