SpankyMcFarland

If the NDP is unable to split left of centre voters, which would appear to be the case for the near future, then the Conservatives will have to look to ex-PCs and fiscally frugal Chretien Liberals to mount a viable challenge. In the absence of a terrorist spectacular on Canadian soil, I don't see people like that ever voting for the likes of Leitch. She fails on both content and style. O'Toole and Raitt are steady performers who aren't going to fly off the handle. But what do I know - I wanted the astronaut in the last Lib race and see what happened there. Has Rempel definitely ruled a run out? Publicly describing yourself at 35 as 'so young' and a 'chick' is sort of weird. She does have talent and good looks to burn but needs to respond more maturely to criticism.

Mulroney was definitely anglophone and Clark's French sounded awful even to me.

O'Toole is a calming presence with appeal across party lines. You know he could handle a crisis. The only rival I see with similar qualities is Lisa Raitt. I thought her husband's diagnosis might have ruled her out.

If you're driving, you exercise due caution but you do also expect a system of rules and personnel around you who are tasked with making driving as safe as possible.

It's a thing, but not a reliable thing for humans.

It is up to the medical, dental and pharmacy colleges to monitor practitioners for inappropriate prescribing much more aggressively than they do now. For example, kids can become opioid addicts after wisdom tooth surgery if they are prescribed opioids. These drugs are incredibly dangerous for young people. In older patients, back pain is frequently mismanaged with excessive opioids that fail to treat the problem. create addiction and cause death from intoxication or accident.

http://www.canadaka.net/link.php?id=98643 This is not an isolated example. I have heard of many cases over the years. At least it was for personal use here.

For any Hefeweizen fans out there, I would recommend Garrison's Rise'n'Stein which, IMO, stacks up well against any of the top German beers in that category: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/garrison-rise-n-stein-hefeweizen/434551/ And the 650 ml bottle means fewer trips to the fridge.

This is another possible end-point. As the robots speed past us in intellectual power, we will at first seem like pets and then pests. How long will they keep such wasteful units around?

We will need to look to the rights of citizens rather than workers, and the power of the oligarchs will have to be curtailed.

Here's one article that mentions the difference between US and UK which would apply to Canada too: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25190034 Here is another one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23692335 PubMed is a good place to look. I will look for better references. Here's a scary article that relates max prescription dose to risk of death: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21467284 We certainly have a prescription opioid crisis in Canada: http://healthydebate.ca/2014/01/topic/politics-of-health-care/prescription-opioid-crisis-canada http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/david-juurlink/opioid-addiction-epidemic_b_8691624.html One of the problems is that we have been very slow to gather data nationally on this problem and usually compare ourselves to the world's worst performer, the US.

It's not the only time (heart attack, renal colic etc.) but you've got to be very careful using opioids for CHRONIC non-cancer pain. In Britain, for example, physicians are much more cautious about this and their death rates prove it. I've quoted two examples where physicians were not stopped by their medical boards. In one of those cases the physician WAS disciplined but was allowed to return to practice and went straight back to doing what he was doing before until the police stepped in years later. It's a little hard to believe these are the only examples.

There are a lot of people in the world who would love to sue the US. Doesn't this set a precedent?

Their use for cancer pain is widely accepted across the world. What distinguishes North America is their use in many other situations where they are both less effective and more liable to cause addiction. This has created a cohort of young addicts. In Atlantic Canada, we have seen a massive in opioid use that we are only now getting to grips with. Relatively few doctors have actually been disciplined. Some of the criminal cases were previously neglected by the regulatory bodies.

A story that hit the headlines in NL last week: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/hollohan-drug-arrest-1.3783772 This is the same clinic as that used by Dr. Sean Buckingham, an extraordinary coincidence? What strikes me is that the local medical board (CPSNL) has not been involved in disciplining many doctors for prescribing offences. In both these cases, it was left to the police to make the bust and, in Buckingham's case, the whole story was widely known long before anything happened. Canada has a very serious problem with opioid abuse and some doctors must be crossing the line but our regulators down here don't seem to be very pro-active.

Do you really think Cruz was less qualified to be President than Trump?

No example from Britain? Start with Walpole and work forward. Berlusconi is widely despised in Italy as a corrupter of the system and an utterly despicable person. There are people as awful as Trump in other countries but that seems a rather poor reason to vote for him.

A person of good character, yes, to a lying jackass and serial fraudster.

Not necessarily. I'm sure it also deters some excellent candidates.

He's on the TV every night with some new car crash revelation. Pretty hard to avoid. Your process has become ridiculously long.

OK take the example of UK PMs. Which one of these people was as poorly informed as Trump on what their job entailed? Which one of them had his swarm of scandals BEFORE taking office?

Thanks but Canada only matters in a teeny tiny way like a lot of other countries, as your strained examples illustrate.One I will say in our defence. How any American can call our election process boring is a mystery given the years you take to choose a leader. Your elections never end down there.

So you really think Trumpf is fit for the office of President? He would encounter hostility, ridicule and contempt in any European country he dared to visit, apart from Belarus maybe. He has betrayed US allies on the frontline with Russia. The man is a walking disgrace and all you can come up with is whataboutery on somebody else. Last time I looked Bill Clinton is not running this time. Are you not willing to defend your candidate?

There is a world of difference between private misdeeds and public vulgarity. Hypocrisy is the essential political virtue.Most candidates have a few skeletons to explain; with Trump, you'd need a cemetery to accommodate them. Each week, some new, weird story appears.

So the American is arguing Canada matters. We all know it doesn't. Compare your examples with, say, nuclear war.