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Riverwind

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Everything posted by Riverwind

  1. People would be concerned if these groups were able to take over a signficant number of seats for a national party. The concern about seeing a national party getting high jacked by the religious right is not a hypothetical concern: it has happened in the US.
  2. First, all of our social institutions and laws regarding marriage are set up to deal with two people. It is not a big deal to extend these laws to include gays. Extending them to cover polgamy is not trivial (i.e. how would divorce work). Second, polygamy is generally a bad deal for the woman and only exists in societies where the rights of women are supressed. Futhermore, these societies have to isolate and expel young men in order to make the polygamous math work out (in old times they would just be killed). In short, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to make the case that the benefits to allowing polygamy out weigh the social harms.
  3. You must make a distinction between a devote Christian and a Christian fundamentalist. Most devote Christians I know have come to terms with the inherent contradiction between believing in a faith that says any non-Christian will be rejected by God in the afterlife and accepting that there many ethical and moral people who will never be Christian and certainly deserve to be accepted by God in the afterlife. Christian fundamentalists are people that don't understand or accept that it is possible to live an ethical and moral life without being 'saved by Jesus'. When these people run for office they frequently try to use the power of the state to suppress the rights of people who do not believe in Christianity by pushing their own very narrow view of theology. By advocating laws rooted in Christian dogma, these Christians undermine the inclusive multi-ethnic society that many Canadians are proud of. These fundamentalists are joining the CPC today and these are the people the mainstream Canadians are really afraid of. However, I do agree that not all Christian CPC candidates are fundamentalists.
  4. Perhaps the Liberals and Conservatives will call a truce: The Liberals will stop exaggerating the Conservatives hidden agenda and the Conservatives will stop exaggerating the Liberal corruption problems. Maybe the Pope will convert to Islam as well....
  5. A functioning civil society that provides the maximum quality of life to the largest number of people. The debate comes down to what is necessary to achieve those goals. Right-wing types feel that a government that must ensure equality of opportunity for all citizens and enable the individual to succeed or fail on their own hard work. Left-wing types feel that a government must ensure equality of outcome for all citizens and protect individuals from the excesses of capitalism. The vast majority of Canadians want a gov't that balances both. All Canadians want an inclusive society where people from many different cultural and religious backgrounds and participate in the civil society that is united by a core set of values. For the most part there is no debate about what these values are. Abortion and gay marriage are signficant in the sense that they are very irrelevant when it comes to building a civil society. For the most part Canadians have succeeded. However, our political culture has been poisoned by extremists who have forgotten that civil society requires compromise and most importantly: not always getting what you want. I may currently be a Liberal supporter but it bothers me when I see people like Kinsella talk about the Conservatives in that way. Unfortunately, Steyn is no better. I would like to see a return to civil discourse.
  6. She tried to push CPC in a direction that she believed in but discovered that the party was dominated by social conservatives that would not move as far as she wanted. She tried to stick with the party was public about her misgivings long before she switched parties. The crisis of the budget vote forced her to stop wavering and make a decision. Switching to Liberals was a very risky move for her which makes it hard to believe that she did it only for power. She has as much chance of becoming the leader of the Liberal party as she had of becoming the leader of the Conservative party. Which is next to zero but not completely zero.
  7. Sparhawk, "Small group of people"? Sorry, that is not how people in Quebec understand it. It is not the way it is reported in the media here. To borrow a left wing term, it was "systemic". It would not be the first time the media exagerates a story to attract more viewers/readers. All of the revelations keep coming back to the same group or four or five people and a handful of advertising companies. Gomery himself said that he felt that a lot of the missing money went to line peoples pockets and did not necessarily end up in Liberal party coffers. Four or five people in a party with 100s if not 1000s of workers and volunteers across the country is not "systemic" - no matter what partisans would like to believe. That said, I can understand why Quebequers would see it as "systemic" because those four or five people were in control of the Quebec wing of the party. However, it is a bit insulting to suggest there is something wrong with people outside of Quebec who can see the bigger picture and are willing to give the Liberals the benefit of the doubt. The fact that Quebequers have no party other than the BQ to turn to is quite a concern. But it is hard to believe that electing a party with social and economic values which are completely out of synch with Quebequers is going to make Quebequers feel any better about federalism. The federal Liberals may be benefiting in BC because people want leaders who are willing to govern the country and move on from the Gomery induced psychodrama.
  8. Equally likely she could be someone who wants to change the society she lives in for the better. Obviously it is a bit arrogant for one to assume that one is the person to do that, however, that criticism applies to anyone who goes into public life. You could be right about her, but at this point in time she can be given the benefit of the doubt.
  9. Politically speaking, it was dumb move for Belinda. She would have been better off waiting for Harper to fail and then try again for the CPC leadership or if Harper won she would have gotten a Minsters portfolio. It it not too hard to believe that she was movitivated by a desire to do what is best for the country (at what she believed to be the best). Also keep in mind that people's opinion's do change over time and expecting someone to stick with a party they don't believe in is kind of silly.
  10. The Belinda deal was about a lot of things but it was not money. Belinda was a leadership candidate for Conservatives and has considerable visibility in the media. Having her join the Liberals was a huge opportunity for the party. One can criticise Martin for putting her so quickly into a senior minister portfolio, however, at the time Martin did not know whether he would still end up losing the budget vote. So giving a outsider the job of cleaning up the Gomery mess was a good way to position for an election. It terms of the corruption scandal itself - if you have been following the Gomery inqury it seems pretty clear that only a small group of people were involved and were likely operatiing without the knowledge of most people in the party. Moreover, it looks like a lot of the money was use to line the pockets of the people involved and that giving money to the Liberal party was an after thought. That said, it is unfortunate that a lot of people are very cynical and assume that if you were a Liberal then you must have known. This is rediculous, it is like saying that all employees at Nortel are crooks because management fudged the books. On the positive side, many Canadians seem to willing to give Martin and his current team the benefit of the doubt. What will determine the outcome of the election will be how Martin is able to address the real issues that Canadians care about.
  11. The CPC position is good from the perspective of a liberal partisan. It is bad from the perspective of a Canadian would like to see the CPC grow beyond its Alberta roots.
  12. Quebec sovereigntists believe in the 2-nation concept: i.e. Quebec should be an equal partner with "English" Canada in all federal institutions. The BQ would argue that current federal arrangment does not give Quebec that equal partner status, so, FPP is necessary since it gives Quebequers the power they deserve until Quebequers vote Yes in a referendum. At that time, the BQ would be happy to accept PR as the basis for the new 2-nation federation that they would be able to negotiate. It may be pure fantasy from the point of view of any non-francophone non-quebequer but those people don't vote for the BQ anyways. I would be curious whether our resident Quebequers agree with this analysis.
  13. You just don't get it: everyone outside of Quebec agrees that the Bloc has too much power. But the average francophone voter in Quebec does not have that opinion. If anything, they think that the Bloc should have more power in Ottawa. So if Jack Layton wants to wants to convince Quebequers to vote for seperation then he should push the Liberals to adopt PR without the BQ approval. If he would rather keep the country together he must start by convincing the BQ to support PR.
  14. Quick answer NO. The party has stated policy not to touch the abortion debate and with SSM the party has moved that all rights and privileges be extended to SS couples in legal unions. This is as far as the party can go without alienating a key base of supporters. This base group is already not comfortable with the moderation of the party and the buck stops with the word Marriage. That is unfortunate. Because that same key base of supporters is what so many Canadians are afraid of. Unfortunately, it is not the substance of that specific issue. I just think that pushing it makes it way too easy to attack the CPC for having a 'hidden' agenda.
  15. FPP gives the BQ 50-60 seats in Quebec. If we adopted a PR system where seats were assigned according to proportion in each province the BQ would only get 35-45 seats. I suspect hell would freeze over before the BQ would agree to reduce its seat count by 10-15 seats. And without a BQ agreement we cannot change the system in the rest of the country. So my orginal point is quite valid. The system is not going to change for the foreseeable future.
  16. A reasonable approach. A hypothetical question though: if could be shown that my assertion is correct and SSM is an Achilles heel for the CPC. Do you think the CPC would abandon SSM as an issue?
  17. PR would never work in a regionalised country like Canada. You would have to be dreaming if you think the BQ would accept any change that reduces their influence in parliment and any PR system that maintains the BQ strength is worse than what we have now. Furthermore, forcing through any constitutional change that the BQ does not agree with would be just asking for a 70% yes vote in a referendum. For better or worse we are stuck with the system the way it is and other parties have to make it work. The Liberals and NDP have figured that out. The Conservatives will have to probably be punished at the ballot box once more before they will get it.
  18. The article says the following: If the conservatives want to be the NDP of the right which considers ideology more important than getting elected then the CPC does not need to change anything. However, if I was a conservative supporter I would be calling my MP immediately and telling him to stop opposing SSM because SSM is a symbol of the conservatives so called 'hidden agenda'. No matter how often the CPC claims that they have moderate policies or how SSM is issue that divides Canadians it still makes the CPC look extreme to be the only party that opposes this issue. The CPC opposition to SSM makes the Liberal claim that the CPC plans to restrict abortion look credible even though the CPC policy platform says they have no such plans. Conservatives need to ask themselves: is SSM so important that they are willing to risk yet another defeat over this? The Conservatives have already abandoned most of their economic principles by promising to keep every spending promise that the Liberals make - so the CPC cannot really claim that they do not want to abandon their principles to get power. So what gives? Why do the CPC supporters on this board not want to give up on SSM?
  19. What's this supposed to mean? There is only one other country, or maybe two at the most, that have such a large geographical territory as Canada does. Exactly, which is why comparing Canada's level of decentralization to other countries is not very useful. It is easy to have a centralized national government if you have 30 million people crammed into a place like the Netherlands.
  20. The Liberals never promised to get rid of the GST (except for Shelia Copps and she had go through a by-election because she went off the red book script). They promised to replace it with a harmonized tax federal provincial sales tax. They could not do that because the provinces told them where to go. The Liberals never promised cancel free trade: they promised to 'renegotiate' NAFTA. They did get a few minor concessions which were sufficient to fill the wording of their red book. OF course that did not satisfy free trade opponents but technically they kept their word. Lastly, given that trust will be this biggest issue in the next campaign Martin will do exactly what he says he is going to do. He would be stupid to do otherwise.
  21. It would be political suicide for Martin to go back on that promise. We will have an election next Feb at the latest.
  22. Us Liberals don't want him either Maybe the NDP
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