SpankyMcFarland

That was true in the past but many non-traditional degrees are much less valuable now. Youth unemployment is considerably higher than 7% and job security has declined. Many of the smaller towns are being hollowed out once traditional industries leave so there is not much point buying property there unless you are retired.

I don't support ranked balloting. I do believe that any proposed change should be put to a referendum. The status quo has a big advantage because people naturally fear what would be a big change and are busy. In any case, electoral reform is not exactly the most serious problem we face in the country. The last federal election had a powerful motivator for turnout in the shape of the incumbent. To his credit, he was probably the most polarizing figure since PT. I doubt if we will see those numbers again for a nice while. Around the world, politicians are unable to solve the big problems of the day. Ask any young person about what is happening to jobs, student debt and house prices.

Here are some recent proposals to fight this growing problem, potentially a new 'dark age' in medicine: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/19/no-antibiotics-without-a-test-says-report-on-rising-antimicrobial-resistance http://amr-review.org/sites/default/files/AMR%20Review%20Paper%20-%20Tackling%20a%20crisis%20for%20the%20health%20and%20wealth%20of%20nations_1.pdf I think governments are going to have to invest substantially in this area. We must respect our opponent. Bacteria have been in the resistance business for something like 3 billion years, and they are ready to resist antibiotics they have not even been exposed to. For example, Clostridium species isolated from the bowel of a Franklin expedition member, frozen in the ice for 120 years, were found to be resistant to antibitiotics developed in the twentieth century. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1980&dat=19881026&id=YYUiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9akFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4063,4308629&hl=en

Many nations do - or have done when kings mattered.

You are going to have to do better than that to convince me.

Rue, I think I'll start a list of Russians killed in WWII to show you what a proper-sized list looks like. On a Canadian website, this is ridiculous. Provide a link to all this verbiage for those who want to read it.

Maybe there is a strategic direction to all this, replacing one leader with a more reasonable one. Let's hope there is some thinking going on that will get the soldiers out of there. I don't see the Taliban as a big international problem right now.

Well, a Palestinian did. I haven't seen convincing evidence of a larger plot.

I don't. I am saying that if there were one, which there should be, the status quo choice would have a big advantage. I can't see most people getting excited about it. Politics is increasingly irrelevant to most people.

In a referendum, I can't see reform winning. We are stuck with the constitutional and electoral framework we have until something really dramatic happens.

A government supported by more people is more legitimate in my view. I would like to see you defend the 1993 federal election result in Canada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_1993 Look at the percentage of votes for each party and the seats won. or the recent UK result. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2015 FPTP gives a massive advantage to regional parties over national ones, a fundamental flaw in the system, creates too many safe seats, encouraging voter apathy, and shuts voters out of choosing party candidates. With all that said, I must say the government has not chosen a wise path to introduce such a major change. The process should be as open and democratic as possible, obviously.

I think the Supreme Court should have given Parliament more time to get this done. It is fiendishly difficult. There are certain categories I am uncomfortable to see doctors involved with: minors; the mentally ill; and certain patients with lifelong disabilities. With the last group, in particular, I worry about the pressure they might come under to do 'the decent thing' and cease to be a 'burden on the family'. We must be vigilant to avoid the eugenics of the fascists and many other like-minded thinkers in this regard. For myself, I would be more than happy to see a doctor step in and help me exit if I needed it.

As an immigrant to this country, I believe there is a finite number of refugees that can be assimilated in Canada per year. We should at least seek to clarify how many we can reasonably take. Events since 9/11 have shown the importance of cultural assimilation. Immigrants should want to embrace our values and should be informed that this is expected. If you don't want to become Canadian, go elsewhere. There are lots who do.

Iran has a long way to go. It's an authoritarian religious dictatorship that treats everybody badly but particularly non-Muslims, Sunnis, Muslims who are considered heretics and Shia from Afghanistan who do not not 'look like' Iranians i.e. racism of a particularly nasty kind that resembles apartheid in some ways. The process of secularization may take many decades but I think the tradition of Iranian civilization that sustained Western Asia for a millennium gives us cause to be cautiously optimistic.

Well, with all due respect, I would still like to whine about it now that a lefty government that I voted for is in power. I would prefer a govt supported by a majority of the electorate.

Why not just have one party, then, and be done with it? That would do away with all these risks.

Well, I suspect most people would subscribe to that 'nonsense argument'. The PM may represent all of us in theory and most of us in times of crisis, e.g. the fires in Alberta, but, in general, he or she is a partisan figure. Do I think the last government represented me on marijuana or safe Injection sites? Of course not and I am sure Conervatives feel the same way about the current lot.

My 'pet party' won power so my argument is not motivated by such concerns.Israel uses a party list system and is often quoted as an argument against PR but it is an outlier. The situation there is unique from many points of view. One of the things they could do is raise the threshold of national vote needed to get seats. Theirs is lower than many other countries with a party list system. How extreme and unstable have Latvia, Finland and Sweden been? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation Germany has also got a higher threshold for representation and its system has worked well by any standard. Bottom line - our system has worked well enough but it could be improved.

PR does not necessarily do that. Again, look at the Irish example. The two centrist parties have been in power for nearly a hundred years. If anything, PR could be blamed for a centralizing tendency, forcing coalitions between parties with very different platforms. Coalitions are probably the biggest problem with PR. Anyway, elections are a marketplace for ideas. Parties should be rewarded for giving people what they want, 'extremist' or otherwise. The main thing for me is that 40% or less of the electorate should not be calling the shots. The popular vote should matter. FPTP only works well in a simple two party contest. Beyond that, it gives rise to weird results that greatly favour regional parties over small national ones. Look at the recent UK general election and compare UKIP against the SNP - ridiculous. I cannot see FPTP surviving in Britain if the races continue to be this complex. Look at our 1993 result that gave way too many seats to a separatist party confined to one province. Anther nice thing about multi-seat STV is that it allows you to choose between candidates from the same party, so you are not forced to take some nutter the party wants. Furthermore, in multi-seat constituencies, it's actually worthwhile to vote even when one party is dominant because they will rarely win all the seats. In my constituency, there was no question at all that the Liberals would win. The Conservatives and NDP had grave difficulty finding somebody to run in what was a foregone conclusion. This is not good for democracy.

PR generally means that a government is backed by a majority of voters in the country, something that hasn't happened in Canada in a long time. Shoddy deals can be made with Independents but generally you get a centrist government based on compromise. Ireland has been a good example of this. A right wing party and a left wing party formed a coalition that has managed to navigate the country out of its worst financial crisis ever. This may inhibit radical change which is a mixed blessing anyway.

All Cabinet Ministers should release their tax returns. We need to know if there are any potential conflicts of interest. These people have volunteered for a key job in the country and should be willing to surrender some privacy for it. After a few years, we'd barely notice it - no big deal. I think their health records should be released as well but that's a fight for another day.

A very basic criterion in a fair system would be that the percentage of seats gained would closely resemble the percentage of votes cast. Our 1993 federal election was a particularly egregious example of FPTP's shortcomings in this regard. A second desirable would be having multiple seats in a riding so that smaller parties would not be automatically excluded. Under the current system in many ridings the result is a foregone conclusion. STV with multi-seat constituencies would produce something close to this without a list system and would also allow choice within parties so that unsuitable candidates could not be foisted on the public. However, in any process to change the system, all parties should be represented, none should have a majority and any proposal should be put to a referendum. I deeply dislike FPTP but it should be up to ordinary Canadians to decide if they want to change it.

Iran is a regional challenge, KSA a global one. Iranian-financed schools are not the big issue in places like South Africa or Europe. It's a grim dictatorship but a relatively stable one. Pakistan is of more concern to me. From my limited experience, Iranians are less interested in the alleged crimes of the West whereas, say, many Pakistanis see CIA plots in everything. Iran's leaders would appear to be more extreme than their younger citizens whereas the opposite seems true in Pakistan, unfortunately.

My entirely uninformed guess is that the cost of building ships in Canada will continue to spiral out of control. The govt cannot limit spending in the same way it could with a foreign supplier. Politics enters the equation and that's that.

The cost of building ships in Canada will continue to spiral out of control. The govt cannot limit spending in the same way it could with a foreign supplier. Politics enters the equation and that's that.